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Northern Bay |
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We want to thank Joan Wendling for allowing us to use the massive amout of information she has colected on Harrises in Newfoundland. She is searching for a Charles Harris who baptized his first child in St. John's in 1853 but she does not know where he came from. If you can help, please contact her at wendling@telusplanet.net.
Northern Bay(pop. 1986, 326). Northern Bay is on the North Shore of Conception Bay (that is, the portion of the western side of the Bay between Salmon Cove and Bay de Verde) and is located chiefly along a series of low cliffs on the north side of a broad, open cove. At the head of Northern Bay is a wide sandy beach, since the early 1970s the site of Northern Bay Sands provincial park. Quite exposed, especially to northeasterly gales, Northern Bay has been the scene of many wrecks. In 1775, for example, numerous crew members from West Country vessels are said to have been drowned at Northern Bay Sands, while the Rothesay qv was wrecked there in 1863. Although historically most fishing premises have been located at beaches on the north side, Isaac's Cove and Long Beach among them, in 1992 people who still fished for a living kept their boats at nearby Ochre Pit Cove qv.It is likely that some West Country firms had seasonal premises at Northern Bay from the mid-1700s. Two early fishing servants were named Moore(s) and Hogan, later family names of Northern Bay, Hogan being the most common name in the community in 1992. According to local tradition permanent settlement dates from 1801, when two Irish fishermen named Cummins and Fogarty purchased premises from John Webb of Harbour Grace; however English and Irish immigrants were settling the North Shore in the 1700s. (Lawrence Coughlan's church at Blackhead, built in the winter of 1768-69, could hold 400 people.) Northern Bay was settled by both Irish and English: in addition to Cummins, Fogarty, Hogan and Moores early family names include Buckler, Butler, Dale, Duggan, Fogarty, Hinchey, Howell, Johnson, Puddester and Tobin. To the north, Long Beach -- in more recent times considered a part of Northern Bay -- was mainly Irish Catholic (family names Layman, McCarthy, Mullaly, Johnson, O'Flaherty, Steele and Woodfine) as was nearby Gull Island qv. Family names of Gull Island common in Northern Bay in 1992 included Delaney and Doyle. A few people also settled on what is termed the South Side of Northern Bay, near Fox Point, where family names were Hogan, Jacobs and Woodrow. Northern Bay was a community of 203 people by the first Census in 1836. The population rose to 272 in 1845 -- at which time there were also 42 people recorded at Long Beach -- and to more than 400 people in the 1880s. People of Northern Bay and Long Beach fished local grounds for cod and salmon, and in later years some fished for cod to the north, as far away as Baccalieu Tickle. Men and occasionally women went to the Labrador fishery; men also went to the spring seal hunt in vessels out of Harbour Grace and St. John's. The collapse of the Munn firm and other important Harbour Grace merchant houses in the late 1800s led to a drastic decline in the Labrador fishery from the North Shore in the early 1900s, and subsequently to increased competition in the local shore fishery. Increasingly Northern Bay fishermen dealt with local merchants, such as Hinchey's in Northern Bay and Tucker's at Burnt Point. Some of the slack was taken up by an increased emphasis on agriculture. Farming had always been important in Northern Bay -- the March family were farming more or less full time from the 1860s -- but by 1901 a large number of livestock were being kept and there were 260 acres under cultivation, chiefly in hay. In 1911 the local Agricultural Society had 152 members. But the continued decline in the shore fishery led to an exodus from the community in the 1920s and 1930s, largely to New England, but also to Cape Breton. Northern Bay, Long Beach and Gull Island constituted something of an Irish Catholic enclave in a generally Protestant area. In 1838 the Catholic parish of Northern Bay was established, and a church and school were built under the direction of Father Bernard Duffy by the early 1840s. When Father Edward J. O'Brien qv began his long service to the parish in 1915 he had a new school built, and in 1924 a new church was consecrated (located in what has historically been considered part of Long Beach). Meanwhile, the Methodist congregation had built a school/chapel by 1845 and a church by 1869. In 1992 Northern Bay was still a predominantly Roman Catholic community, its church and Corpus Christi elementary and high schools also being used by Catholics in the surrounding area. After the opening of fish plants at Old Perlican and Bay de Verde in the 1960s a number of people found employment as plant workers, and a few became involved in the new fresh fish business as vessel owners or fishermen. With the development of the crab fishery in the late 1970s more residents found work in the processing plants, but catches fell after 1985.
Sources
In the Vital Statistics Books they have the following:
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