McGill Libraries
McLennan Library Building3459 rue McTavish
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 0C9
Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Ardley, E. (Edward)
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1857-1922
History
Edward John Ardley was born in July 1857 in Essex, England.
He was an assistant curator at Redpath Museum, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec. He started as a janitor at the Peter Redpath Museum shortly after its opening in 1882. He took care of the collections and constructed the display stands and shelves. Three years later, Ardley began to clean, label and mount specimens due to the increasing size of the museum’s collections. He also learned to operate a lathe to slice sections of rocks and fossils. In 1894, he took charge of the museum specimens and earned the new title of "caretaker and museum assistant.” In 1911, he became a collector of fossils and rocks and a preparator of ethnological materials.
In 1886, he married Mary Anne O'Grady (1857–1888), and in 1888, he remarried Isabella Ross MacMillan (1851–1943). He died on January 11, 1922, in Montreal, Quebec.