Let’s head back to Dec. 29, 1968 to visit the 54th Christmas party of the Brandrith family.
At the 1968 event at St. David’s Church hall, 67 family members, some from all over the province and elsewhere in Canada and the U.S., attended as well as several their guests.
An article in an edition of the Delta Optimist noted that Mrs. R.M Allen of North Delta and Mrs. Roy Gibson of Victoria, two of the original children of the family, attended but remaining son Frank was not able to be there.
The article noted the party was started in 1914 by “Granny” Brandrith in the “old house” on Raitte Road (now called 12th Avenue) and as her children married they took over. The younger generation would eventually put it on.
William James Brandrith (1842-1916) and Rachel Jefferson (1864-1939) settled on farm land in South Delta in 1904.
The Brandriths had 13 children, some born after the family moved to Delta, and they married into the Love, Dixon, Skinner, Beaumont, Allen, Gibson, Foote and Gunn families, according to the Delta Archives.
Some of the children took up their own farms in Delta where they farmed for many years.
