Matilda L. O'Donnell

Submitted by: Mary Ellen

The funeral rites were at ten o'clock on Saturday morning from St. Patrick's church, the Rev. Father T. J. Hayes officiating. Interment was in the churchyard burial plot.

Miss O'Donnell's father, the late John O'Donnell, was the builder and one of the operators of the Empire Theater, the first theater built in Placerville, in 1856, and it was in living quarters adjoining the theater that she was born.

In young woman-hood she became a school teacher in this county, and taught in a number of the rural districts, also finding emploment at the printing trade. In this latter work , she was employed in the management of W. A. Selkirk and also under the management G. J. Carpenter, she also worked San Francisco for a large printing company.

Throughout her life she demonstrated a sincere interest in the early history of the county and in the later years she made it a hobby to collect historical data which she occasionally made the basis for articles contributed to various publications.

A few years ago she suffered a fall in which she broke her hip, and since that time had been a semi-invalid whose needs were administered to by her sister and life-long companion, Miss Mary O'Donnell, who survives her.

In addition, she is survived by a sister-in-law, Mrs. Millie O'Donnell, of San Francisco; and by the following cousins, Nona, Alice and Theodore Donahue, and Evangeline Seifried , of San Francisco; Mrs. Crum of Oakland, Mrs. W.E. Cass, Mrs.Gilbert, Mrs. R.H. Post and Thomas O'Keefe, of Crockett.