Posts - Page 13 of 16 - The History of Little Bay

Mining Money

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 money. First you’ll need some context. The German Baron Franz von Ellershausen created Little Bay pretty much from scratch in 1878. He built the town; mine, mind, and man. He oversaw the layout and picked its original residents, both the high cultur ...

Sergeant Thomas Wells

There was a new Sergeant in town. It was 1883. Sergeant Thomas Wells of the Newfoundland Constabulary arrived in Little Bay on August 3rd. He arrived during the town’s annual regatta but made no mention of it in his journals. He wasn’t there for that. He was a staunch and imposing man with a sense of moral superiority. Little Bay was messy and he was there to clean it up. He would have known coming in that the place was dangerous. The suddenly expanding mining town had attracted a rich assortm ...

Postmaster Richard Walsh

With the rise of digital resources, more and more people are researching their family histories. This has led to a surge of interest in Newfoundland history. Much of this interest comes from people looking to place an ancestor of theirs into their larger historical context. This local attention can give new life to our tourism industry. It is organized online on a handful of websites dedicated to sharing resources and methodologies. I’d like to recognize the efforts of the tireless community or ...

The Little Bay Pioneers

If you’ve ever seen the film The Grand Seduction you’ve probably wondered about historical Newfoundland cricket. I’ve been doing a little digging on it myself and as it turns out it was kind of a big deal! Cricket was the most popular sport in Newfoundland during the 19th century. It is recorded on the island as early as 1824 but the game took off in the last decades of that century. It had only a brief popularity in Newfoundland between 1880 and 1910 before being overtaken by soccer. I get th ...

Dr. Louis Joseph

I should warn you that this starts with a grave. It’s only fitting, it’s a tragic story after all. There is a modest cemetery in The Bight where I’d walk, reading the names on the aging gravestones. That’s all they were to me then, just names. This was before the work began, before I knew the people behind those names, before I knew this story. Joseph stood out to me. It was an odd surname for Little Bay. I’d never heard of any Jospehs’ in town. I asked around but no one could tell me who they ...

Pittman, Thompson and Lamb

I'm building timelines to cover the lives of Little Bay's prominent historical figures in a series of Facebook notes. It's an attempt to keep track of some of my sources both publicly and chronologically while also potentially drawing the attention of other researchers with more information, corrections, or pictures. Maybe discussion will help me fill in some of the blanks. Plus if you're interested in one family I'm working on but not the whole project it'll give something more specific to foll ...

Admiral Kennedy’s Visit

The following is an excerpt from Admiral Kennedy's 1885 text "Sport, Travel, and Adventure in Newfoundland and the West Indies" in which he recounts his visit to Little Bay in 1881. Soon after we had anchored, the " oldest in- habitant" came on board to see me. I gave him a good stiff glass of old Scotch whisky, which loosened his tongue. "Them's fine heads," said he, looking at my caribou heads in the cabin; " but Lor', sir, they're nothing to some I shot when I first came here." Whereupon h ...

Her Lady of Carmel Parish

https://youtu.be/vTiqLNid-YYBuildings are strange and social things. Churches have especially complicated relationships. Little Bay’s Catholic church and its first priest are entwined. Their relationship exemplifies this project as a whole. I uncovered this story slowly, piecing it together from forgotten documents and half remembered tales, from once living people and events nearly lost to time, from uploaded images and unexpected archives. Little Bay is history forgotten. This is a ghost story ...

The Little Bay Heroine

https://youtu.be/Jrp__Ihhx0Q

Otis Boyden

The story of Little Bay’s first photographer is incomplete. It’s an unfinished puzzle which hints at a fascinating whole if it could only be put together. The pieces I’ve assembled, however, resist joining neatly. The first piece was the name Otis Boyden. I found him listed in the Supreme Court Documents as Little Bay’s photographer. His name led me to an online blog about the historic photography of the Boyden family, tracing its lineage back to Elijah Boyden. Elijah’s brother’s name was Otis ...

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