The Hearn family came to Little Bay from St. John’s. They make their first appearance in my records in 1882 with Patrick Hearn. Thomas Hearn, the man who first opened Hearn’s store, was likely Patrick’s son. He was 15 years old in 1882. According to ...
In this piece I'll demonstrate how the food supply of the late 19th century town of Little Bay, Newfoundland was embedded in the larger colonial shipping system. Little Bay was a company town which grew out of a mining boom in Northern Newfoundland. ...
The building was shabby: a cramped two-story thing. A notice posted on the door instructed the public that business would only be transacted out of a small side window. The Post Office was inside, sharing the space with the town’s surgery. The squat ...
Culture is made physical by the things we create. There is nothing quite like the history of an object. Artifacts connect us to a history that we can touch, see, and hear. Much of Little Bay’s physical history was lost to the fires but some historic ...
Little Bay was visited by a mixture of steamers and sailing vessels. Many of the steamers were the cutting edge of technology. They loaded up on ore for Swansea in Whales where they would unload it alongside ships from the other colonies. Little Bay ...
I’ve decided to explore the history of the Little Bay mine itself in this piece. However, I didn’t want to tell it from the perspective of the owners or managers and instead opted to focus on the experience of the mine from the point of view of the m ...
If you were a miner working in Little Bay during the late 19th century you would have had a lot of places to spend your hard earned wages. In this piece I’m going to explore the financial side of the miner’s life by considering the movement of their ...
The first tinsmith in Little Bay was a man named Robert Malcolm. He is first documented in the town in 1882. He was married to Catherine Morisey and the couple had four children. In the late 1880s Little Bay was experiencing something referred to as ...
Little Bay was a prosperous and cosmopolitan town in the 19th century. It was unusual for its time and place. However, while there was variety in its resident’s nationalities and a mixture of languages could be heard spoken on its streets, the popula ...
Daniel “Big Dan” Courtney was the proprietor of the Little Bay Hotel. He came to Little Bay from Halifax and first appears in my sources in May of 1885. Innkeepers of the time were big men. They had to be. Big Dan was the exception. He wasn’t a lar ...
