JanuaryLittle Bay had been quiet that holiday season - a point of pride for the town’s Temperance movement who eagerly solicited “signatures to a petition asking the Council and House of Assembly to write legislation with regard to the sale and manufacture of intoxicating liquors. About 150 names the chief officers of the mines” were collected. The Little Bay Brass Band “accompanied by lighted torches marched round the town and cheered the inhabitants.” But the calm wouldn’t last. A new disrup ...

January As the year 1887 opened the ban against alcohol came into effect (Twillingate Sun, January 1, 1887). Sergeant Wells hired spies to buy alcohol and report back to him on its sellers (Wells, 164). On January 22nd the cops busted up alcohol operations at the houses of Fitzgerald and McLean. Mrs. McLean was charged with assaulting a police officer (Wells, 165). Wells was reported as the bane of evildoers “bringing justice to the “invincibles in this Little Bay of ours.” It was reported tha ...

January The year 1886 opened bleak as the fisheries were increasingly dismal and the mining operations had now been slowed for months. In a letter to the editor of the Twillingate Sun that January was written “We have just entered upon another New Year, and what has it brought us more than years that are passed? To the poor it has brought poverty, hunger and cold. We can see men and women (walking skeletons, for nothing better we can call them) wending their way to the Magistrates, begging re ...

January The year 1885 opened with shipping problems caused by heavy ice. People on route were instead dropped as close as possible and left to walk the ice the rest of the way and freight being shipped to town was returned to St. John’s still onboard steamer (Evening Telegram, January 6, 1885). This hindered communication, especially among the working class, as “the charge for sending messages exorbitant the general public from availing of the privilege of communicating by telegraph” (Twilli ...

“In the valley between two hills on the south side is situated one of the most valuable copper mines in Newfoundland. A tramway extends from the mine to the wharf in Little Bay, and there is a road to the settlement at the head of Indian bight. A white wooden church, with a spire, has been erected at the southwest end of the dwelling houses, and a wharf projects from the centre of the beach” (Newfoundland and Labrador 1884: Supplement Issue 1 by United States Hydrographic Office). January Tem ...

January The newly opened Little Bay Bazaar was doing well with profits being used to complete the RC church and to build a house for Father O’Flynn. The local custom involved Mr. Lynch leading the Little Bay Brass Band through town to the Hall in announcing the opening of the Bazaar at 3pm. Its decorations were said to be “especially profuse” and the Hall was divided so that “each stall formed a kind of triumphal arch, and was laden with various useful articles suitable for all classes, great ...

1882 was a year of change, both for the town and the colony. Politics abounded and Little Bay was right in the middle of it. Newfoundland had its 15th general election in October and William Whiteway formed the government under the Conservative Party. The elected officials for the Twillingate-Fogo region were R.P. Rice and Jabaz P. Thompson - the founder of the Twillingate Sun. The railway's construction was underway, despite the debates, and “During the ensuring winter hundreds of men were e ...

By 1881 Little Bay had “a well equipped laboratory and numerous stores for grain, hay, provisions and necessary mining stock large reservoirs capable of supplying any necessary amount of water” but, perhaps of greatest note, was the “ample wharfage for the largest vessels afloat, with the finest harbourage in the world” (Harbour Grace Standard). The mining town received yet another famous visitor this year, The Admiral, Sir William Kennedy. Kennedy wrote of his visit describing Little Bay as ...

In 1880 the copper boom peaked for Notre Dame Bay. This was the high-water mark but the decline would be slow across the rest of the 19th century, coming in fits and starts before puckering out in the early 1900s. But, these were still the boom years and the town was being hailed as "Newfoundland's el Dorado" (Moments in Time). It also gained some fancy government appointees this year such as a shiny new Magistrate by the name John B. Blandford (Twillingate Sun). A subcollector named Duder was ...

The town of Little Bay was on the map in 1879 with a population recently swollen and suddenly lucrative. "Adolph Guzman developed during much of 1879, removing hundreds of tons of ore from the locale to the Little Bay smelters" (Martin). Many of the early players in the town were of German origin and Baron Franz von Ellershausen treated the design of the town and mine together as a social project. Ellershausen was already known in Nova Scotia where he had built houses for 32 shipwrecked Germa ...