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Historical Notes on FerrylandAuthorities differ on the derivation of the name Ferryland. It has been written as Forilon, Foriland, and considered by some as a corruption of Veralum which was the ancient name of St. Alban's in England. It was first visited by French fishermen as early as 1504 and used by them as a base for summer fishery. It was these who called it Forillon, which meant "standing out or separated from the mainland" and thus aptly described the peninsula now know as the Downs. The French abandoned their east coast resorts early in the sixteenth century and went each summer to the south coast where fishing began a month earlier. Englishmen then came and built temporary quarters at Ferryland, and so a century passed until Sir George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, applied in 1621 for a royal charter to colonize a portion of Newfoundland. In 1622 he received a grant of part of the southeastern peninsula, with quasi-royal jurisdiction. He named his province Avalon. Captains Powell and Wynne were sent out to Ferryland as Baltimore's agents to supervise construction work. Wynne thus described the progress made up to late autumn of 1622; "The range of buildings was forty four foot of length and fifteen foot of breadth, containing a hall, entry, cellar, four chambers, kitchen, staircases and passages. A face of defense was raised to the water sideward." After Christmas there were added a parlour fourteen feet long and twelve feet broad, a lodging chamber, a forge, salt works, a well sixteen feet deep, a brew house, a wharf, and a fortification " so that the whole may be made a pretty street." Land was cleared and in the spring wheat, barley, oats, beans peas, radishes, lettuce, turnips, cabbage, carrots and kale were sown. Baltimore spent forty thousand pounds on his colony, but profits were slow of realization and he tardily began to suspect that all was not well. He came out with his family in 1627. In his letters to King Charles I he complained of raids by French Men of War and requested protection by British ships. Lady Baltimore found the vigorous climate too severe for her frail health and in 1629 she and her son Cecil left Newfoundland for Virginia. Her husband decided to abandon Ferryland and obtained a grant of land in Virginia, whither he and many of the colonists removed. Sir George Calvert's province in Newfoundland had been named Avalon. Around this name centres the most beautiful legend in our island story. It carries us back to the beginning of the Christian Era, and to the occupation of Britain by Roman legions. It was Joseph of Arimethea who first preached the gospel in Britain. At Glastonbury in Somerset, he built a church, and, in time, a great monastery was erected there. It was there the tomb of King Arthur was found in 1191. Glastonbury was surrounded by fens and was called the Isle of Avalon. among the ruins of this hallowed spot, there blooms twice a year a hawthorn tree still known as the sacred thorn. Tradition tells us that Joseph carried with him to Britain a staff from the veritable tree whence the crown of thorns that Christ carried at the Crucifixion. The disciple planted the staff at Avalon, where it lives and flowers each may and Christmastide. Lord Baltimore, who was a graduate of Oxford, was thoroughly versed in English legend. He envisioned an Avalon in the far west, where, like Joseph of old, he would build a shrine of faith amid the darkness of heathen lands. he brought missionaries with him who, like Arthur's knights were pledged: Eight years after Baltimore vacated Ferryland, Sir David Kirke took over the property under charter from the Crown. Kirke was born in Dieppe, France, the son of a London merchant and a French mother. Because of religious troubles he came to London and he and his brother were given a commission by King Charles I to outfit warships to prey on French commerce. Kirke made possible the colonization of Nova Scotia by Sir Alexander Macdonald, and captured eighteen French sail bound for Quebec. That town was forced to capitulate in the following year, 1629. Peace was proclaimed between England and France, and Kirke was ordered to restore the booty which he had taken. To recompense him for the losses thus sustained, he was given a grant of Newfoundland. He established his headquarters at Ferryland. Kirke, like Baltimore, was a staunch loyalist and during the struggle between King and Parliament he offered Charles a refuge at Ferryland. He fitted out a fleet a ships manned with heavy guns to make an invasion of England in conjunction with Prince Rupert of the Rhine. the plan did not eventuate, and the victorious Parliament called to England to answer the charge of rebel. As he had not actually taken part in the war, he was allowed to return to Newfoundland, but as a precaution Oliver Cromwell sent a British fleet to take every gun out of Ferryland. Kirke died there in 1655, and was buried on the Downs. The place of his tomb is unknown to this day. Nothing remains of the costly mansion in which Baltimore and Kirke once lived in vice regal splendor. The latter had repaired and improved the huge brick building and had added towers when it was proposed to house the King of England. The building was partly destroyed by the Dutch in 1673, when they sacked the town. Its proximity to the sea and exposure to winter storms reduced the mansion to a heap of ruins. It was later used as a stone quarry for fishermen. [ Above quotation from: Christopher Oates webman@wordplay.com ]
The information given below was extracted with permission, by the folks at Wordplay bookstore in St. John's from the Newfoundland Historic Trust book, written in 1978 entitled "Ten Historic Towns"
Originally called the Holy Family Church, the name was changed in the
1920s. The Church's cornerstone was laid in 1863 and the finished structure
consecrated in 1865. It is the last surviving one of a group of five stone
churches that were erected during the episcopacy of Bishop Mullock. A very
simple example of rural Gothic, the Church's style (despite its late date) is
more likely to be, like the Anglican Church in Harbour Grace, an example of the
survival of the Gothic forms rather than their revival.
The Church was constructed with the assistance of the local people and from stone quarried at Stone Island at the mouth of Calvert Harbour. The incongruous brick tower is a later addition to the structure. The iron statues, which make the Church's entrance so impressive, were salvaged from a ship bound for Trois Rivières which ran aground at Ferryland in 1926.
Opened in September of 1871 this lighthouse is the work of William
Campbell, a St. John's contractor, and Thomas Burridge, a St. John's mason. A
two-storey, double dwelling it was designed to accommodate the lightkeeper, his
assistant and their families. The tower is a masonry structure sheathed in iron
and holds a fixed dioptric light supplied by Stevenson's of Edinburgh.
This is a somewhat unusual house in Newfoundland being built half of
stone and half of timber. Its date of construction is undetermined but it is
erected on what was once the Tessier property. Peter and Lewis Tessier came to
Newfoundland from Newton Abbot, Devonshire, and conducted a large mercantile
business in St. John's at the end of the 19th century. They were descendants of
Baron de Tessier who fled the excesses of the French Revolution to settle in
England. Peter Tessier married a daughter of Robert Carter of Ferryland. Their
son, Charles, built an elaborate estate, Germondale, on Waterford Bridge Road.
It was demolished in the early 1970s. Peter Tessier may have constructed a stone
house on the Ferryland property as a country retreat. It is thought the timbered
upper section was added around the turn of the century, possibly by Dr. R.
Jardine Freebairn who owned and occupied the place until his death 8 September
1934 at the age of 71 years. A native of Bronhill, Dumbartonshire, Scotland,
Freebairn spent much of his life as a medical doctor in Ferryland where he also
acted as magistrate. A daughter, Jessie, married Hedley Bret of St. John's.
Historic Cemeteries of There are three known cemeteries in Ferryland today. I say "known", because many small family plots and other less known cemeteries around Newfoundland have been long forgotten and have gone back to the earth. This may be true in Ferryland as well. Of the three known cemeteries, only one, the Roman Catholic Holy Trinity Cemetery is still in use. The other two are the Old Non-Denominational Cemetery (South Side Burial Ground) and the now abandoned Anglican Cemetery (Forge Hill or Fox Hill Cemetery). Members of the Morry family and their kin are found in all three cemeteries. The two older cemeteries have both been identified as "Municipal Heritage Sites" by "Canada's Historic Places", a federal/provincial/territorial initiative. Unfortunately such designation provides only recognition, not protection, for such sites, and these two in any event are rapidly deteriorating from lack of care and attention. Canada's Historic Places website ( http://www.historicplaces.ca
), provides basic information on the South Side and North Side Burial Grounds
which is extracted and presented below.
North
Side Burial Ground Municipal Heritage Site Ferryland, Newfoundland and Labrador
North Side Burial Ground (Forge Hill Anglican Cemetery) Statement
of Significance Description
of Historic Place Dating
to the mid-eighteenth century, the North Side Burial Ground in Ferryland, NL
served as a cemetery for a century and a half. It is located along the Southern
Shore Highway on Fox Hill and overlooks Ferryland Harbour. The designation is
confined to the area enclosed by the cemetery fence and identified locally as
North Side Burial Ground. Heritage
Value North Side Burial Ground has historic value as a physical record of Ferryland’s history, the cemetery markers serving as both historic records and artifacts on the landscape. There are less than a dozen intact headstones in the cemetery and it is possible that many graves are no longer marked. It is one of the oldest known cemeteries in the community, with the earliest headstones dating from the mid 1700s. The cemetery was officially consecrated and named North Side Burial Ground in July 1827 by John Inglis, Bishop of Nova Scotia. At that time, Ferryland was the mercantile and administrative centre of the Southern Shore region. The names of those buried in North Side Burial Ground suggest that this cemetery was reserved for Ferryland’s upper class. Throughout the 1700s and into the 1800s, the ruling elite in Ferryland were predominantly English-born and Protestant. Many were agents sent out to Newfoundland under the auspices of English West Country merchants. Others were administrators sent to the community by the English government. It appears that some of those interred at North Side Burial Ground - namely Thomas Congdon, John Steer and Neil Shannon were seasonal merchants or merchant’s agents, while Peter Weston served as a Justice of the Peace. Elizabeth Hamilton was the wife of Rev. Henry H. Hamilton. Around this time, some merchants were also putting down permanent roots in the community. Half of the intact headstones in the cemetery are memorials to members of the Morry family. The Morrys first came to the region in the latter decades of the 1700s, when Matthew Morry, a West Country merchant from Dartmouth, petitioned the Governor of Newfoundland for the right to possess property in Caplin Bay (later named Calvert). His request would have challenged the tradition of the time, which saw land change hands among fishing fleets at the beginning of each fishing season. Morry was granted exclusive rights to the land for use in the fishery and so began his family’s venture in the New World. The Morrys would become one of the most influential merchant families in the region, and eventually settled in Ferryland. The cemetery is located a short distance from the land where the family made their home. The most recent stone in the cemetery is a memorial to the crew of the Danish ship Sigrid. On Friday, December 3, 1903, the 80 ton Sigrid was heading north to St. John’s when it ran into high winds and rough seas off Ferryland Head. When lighthouse keeper William Costello saw debris floating in the water, he knew a ship had run aground. He immediately went into town to get assistance. Rescuers saw pieces of the boat and its cargo strewn on the rocks. Then the men spotted the bodies of the crew, none of whom had survived the wreck. The rescuers braved the rough weather and steep cliffs, lowering themselves by rope to retrieve the bodies of the Sigrid’s crew. After four days, all of the bodies were retrieved and the Sigrid’s crew was buried at North Side Burial Ground. The monument marking their place of burial was erected in the cemetery by the Danish government in the early 1900s. North Side Burial Ground has aesthetic value due to its unique environmental setting and burial stones. Located on Fox Hill, overlooking Ferryland Harbour, it provides an impressive view of the community, particularly Cape Broyle Head, the islands that dot the harbour, The Downs and Ferryland Head. The cemetery has further aesthetic value due to the age of the remaining headstones and the materials used that correspond to the age of the cemetery. Source: Town of Ferryland Regular Council Meeting July 1, 2008
South
Side Burial Ground Municipal Heritage Site Ferryland,
Newfoundland and Labrador
South
Side Burial Ground (Old Non-denominational Cemetery) from Statement
of Significance Description
of Historic Place Dating
to the mid-eighteenth century, South Side Burial Ground (also referred to as the
General Cemetery) in Ferryland, NL served as a burial ground for almost two
centuries. It is located along the Southern Shore Highway on sloping land
overlooking Ferryland Harbour. The designation is confined to the area enclosed
by the cemetery fence. Heritage
Value South
Side Burial Ground has been designated a municipal heritage site by the Town of
Ferryland because of its historic and aesthetic values.
Please turn to the Links Page for more information on Ferryland.
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