Alice & Alistair Lessels, John Jackson
Description
- Media Type
- Image
- Item Type
- Photographs
- Description
- Alice Lessels with her youngest son, Alistair, and John Jackson, hired "right-hand man" to the Skoogs family playing with pups on the lawn at Holyrood House in Oakville, Ontario.
Jack Lessels, husband of Alice, was head groundskeeper on the estate at the foot of Dorval Drive. The family lived in the groundskeeper's cottage built for them by estate owner, Gordon Lefebvre in 1931 for the next 20 years. Mr. Lefebvre was Vice-President of the General Motors Pontiac Division.
The H. Skoog family lived on the northwest corner of Dorval Drive and Lakeshore Road, West. Their children were Willard and Thelma, who taught at the old Central School. One of the crops on their farm was strawberries; the patch today is St. Judes Cemetery.
John Jackson had come from England with his brother Andrew. Roy Lessels told us that John was the babysitter while he and his brother Alistair were young. "He was like a member of our family." - Notes
- Information and photographs of Holyrood house, the Lefebvre family and the history of the property in the Trafalgar Township Historical Society digital collection were shared by Mr. Roy Lessels in May 2016. Roy's father was the head grounds keeper for the estate from 1929 to 1945, in the employ of Gordon Lefebvre who was head of the Pontiac Division, General Motor Company, and again from 1955-1969 for David Knapp. The images with notes remain the property of Mr. Lessels.
The "Groups of Related Records" link will take you to the other records, maps of the property and photographs of the estate people in Mr. Lessels photo album. - Subject(s)
- Personal Name(s)
- Alice Lessels, d.age 99, 11 months, 14 days, married John (called Jack) Lessels, b.1902, d.March 5, 1986, age 84. Son John Roy (called Roy), b. February 13, 1930, married Joyce. (He worked for Rubbermaid for many years, Joyce worked for Oakville dentist, John McLennan.) Son Alistair Anderson, b.January 27, 1932 (in Edinburgh, Scotland), married Diane Hammer in March 1964, d.July 29, 2014. (He had a real estate brokerage in Collingwood.) Harry, brother of Jack Lessels, d.August 19, 1990.
- Local identifier
- TTJRL000507
- Collection
- Trafalgar Township Historical Society
- Language of Item
- English
- Geographic Coverage
-
-
Ontario, Canada
Latitude: 43.4341563308426 Longitude: -79.6766329020691
-
- Copyright Statement
- Copyright status unknown. Responsibility for determining the copyright status and any use rests exclusively with the user.
- Recommended Citation
- Alice & Alistair Lessels, John Jackson
- Contact
-
Trafalgar Township Historical Society Sponsor: Jeff Knoll, Local & Regional Councillor for Oakville Ward 5 – Town of Oakville/Regional Municipality of Halton
