Bay Roberts: Not Your Typical Small Town

By Michael F. Flynn

The story of Bay Roberts is one of an ordinary people who lived through a turbulent and extraordinary past. Adventure, murder, religious strife, inventions, successful local newspapers, and enterprise make up the collective history of a community thriving in Newfoundland today. The town has hosted tragedies, unprecedented commercial prosperity (and failure), famous sea captains, buried treasure, ancient tombstones, and intriguing grave markers. Stories of eccentric characters, war heroes, and horrible shipwrecks fill these pages. The town has a fascinating link to the Titanic tragedy, was a central hub in communications and international connections for government leaders during World War II, and is the home and birthplace of many famous poets, novelists, businessmen, and politicians.
The mission of this Historic series is to bring to light the ageless character of Newfoundland and Labrador communities in an effort to preserve the history of this province and to educate future generations about this corner of the global village. Bay Roberts: Not Your Typical Small Town is the third instalment in this series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Flanker Press
• Release date: Jul 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781926881126

Michael F. Flynn

Michael Flynn was born in Bay Roberts and is the third of six children. He received his early education at St. Michael’s primary/elementary school and All Hallows Central High and then attended Memorial University of Newfoundland for five years and graduated with bachelor degrees in education and science. He taught school for thirty-two years at Northern Bay, Brent’s Cove, Brigus, and Bay Roberts and worked part-time in journalism for such newspapers as the Compass, the Evening Telegram, the Independent, and the Bay Roberts quarterly Klondyke Gazette. Michael’s passion for history was born when he was asked to contribute a weekly local history column for the Compass. The research for these articles led to a long-time friendship with David (D. B.) Russell, former editor of the Bay Roberts Guardian, who generously gave him unlimited access to the Guardian files. A tireless volunteer, he has served as chairman of the Bay Roberts Recreation Commission, the town’s tourism committee, the youth justice committee and various sports groups. Michael is the father of three children—Ian, Michelle, and Frankie—and now resides in St. John’s with his spouse, Patricia.

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Our Roots

Little Bell Island Connection

Jugglers Cove¹ lies at the eastern extremity of the Bay Roberts peninsula in Conception Bay and a few kilometres by sea from Little Bell Island, one part of an archipelago of three islands in this area of the bay. The others are Kellys Island, where a Bay Roberts sea captain once searched for buried treasure rumoured to have been hidden there by pirates, and Bell Island, the once prosperous iron isle, so named because of its once lucrative iron ore deposits.

Little Bell Island, an outcrop of granite, characterized by huge cliffs, poses a navigational threat. Except for a single beach, access to the island would be virtually impossible. Nevertheless, there is a strong ancestral connection between this barren piece of rock and the eventual settling of Bay Roberts on the west side of the bay. This connection goes back over 300 years, when at the end of King William’s War, the French, led by Le Moyne d’Iberville, embarked on a campaign of destruction, fighting for control of the English shore between Trepassey and Bonavista, and, more particularly, for control of the rich fishing grounds. This area was crucial to the French, as the growing planter population and West Country (English) fishery posed constant threats to France’s control of the maritime approaches to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and New France.² D’Iberville was born in Montreal, then known as Ville Marie, in 1661. He died in Havana, Cuba, in 1706, but not before destroying thirty-six Newfoundland settlements, killing 200 people, and taking more than 700 prisoners. On this path of destruction he was accompanied by Jacques Francois de Mombeton de Brouillon and 400 Canadian Indians. On December 1 and 2, 1696, the French had captured St. John’s, and residents of neighbouring communities feared imminent attacks. One man swore he would fight to the death to defend his home. That man, John Earle Sr., became the unofficial patriarch of Bay Roberts.

John Earle Sr. was born on November 1, 1678, in Poole, Dorset, England, but moved to Newfoundland and lived on Little Bell Island at the time of the French attacks. He married Fanny Garland in 1698 at Harbour Grace and, according to family records, they had three sons, John Jr., William, and George, and a daughter whose name is unknown, but she is believed to have married a man whose surname was Mercer.³ Because he expected a French attack at any time, John Sr. prepared for what most would consider an impossible defensive tactic. His story is likely fictitious, or at least exaggerated, but one worthy of mention. It has inspired the people of Bay Roberts and instilled in them the fighting and competitive spirit that John Earle purportedly possessed. Earle was determined to defeat the French fleet or at least deliver them a devastating setback. While the French savoured their successes in St. John’s and elsewhere, Earle prepared to defend his beloved island. He erected defence posts above the beach and meticulously carved wooden figures of armed men and placed them in strategic positions at the barricades. Earle had several muskets and a cannon. It is unclear how he obtained such a powerful piece of artillery, but the cannon was probably salvaged from a warship that had wrecked in the area. This gun would later be the salvation of Little Bell Island.

Earle waited patiently for the French advance; it came on January 19, 1697. The French left Portugal Cove in two longboats and headed for Little Bell Island hoping for an easy capture. They had no idea of the surprise that awaited them. From his vantage point high on the cliffs, Earle watched the boats’ progress across the bay and waited patiently for their arrival.

His patience paid dividends. When the first French boat came within firing distance, Earle fired the cannon; the boat went to the bottom. The second boat beat a hasty retreat when the tenacious Earle went from barricade to barricade firing off muskets. This manoeuvre convinced the French that the island was heavily fortified; they fled, heading for more vulnerable communities in Conception Bay. As a result, Earle’s plantation was the only one in Conception Bay not burned by the French.⁴

In his book Newfoundland, Harold Horwood presents the account as factual, but does not list any of his sources. Walter R. Smith claimed that John Earle Sr. owned Little Bell Island in 1696, but does not mention his defence of the island.⁵ Alan Williams, however, in his book Father Baudoin’s War: D’Iberville’s Campaigns in Acadia and Newfoundland, 1696, 1697, says that, according to Baudoin, the French boats were in the Holyrood area at the time of Earle’s alleged defence of his island. Abbe Jean Baudoin, a chaplain and recorder who accompanied d’Iberville, listed all the settlements that had been destroyed, as well as the number of people and houses in each place. He did not mention Little Bell Island in his daily journal, but devoted considerable space to describing d’Iberville’s frustration at being unable to capture Carbonear Island, where many area residents had taken refuge. D’Iberville did not express frustration about his failure at Little Bell Island because, in all likelihood, the incident did not take place.

Baudoin was thirty-four years old at the time of the 1697 raid and died a year later in 1698, leaving a comprehensive record of the French raids. His diary lists Bay Roberts as one of the settlements destroyed in 1697. The settlement then had ten servants, three planters, and three boats, but he does not mention if there were any casualties or prisoners taken. It is known that the population was reestablished one year after the raid and included two planters, ten servants, two women, and one child.

The Earles may have still been living on Little Bell Island at the time of a second French invasion in 1705. The French forces, led by Jacques Testard de Montigny, had returned to Newfoundland to destroy communities that had been rebuilt after the 1697 attack. If the Earles were still there, they were not alone. All residents of Port de Grave had taken refuge there. Their community was destroyed in 1697, and they feared a second attack, which came in 1705. The 1706 census reported that Port de Grave had been totally abandoned. Before the French arrived, James Butler of Port de Grave had been appointed leader of the militia on Little Bell Island; his nephew, John Butler, served as lieutenant. This time, Little Bell Island offered protection for the Port de Grave people, although there may have been a battle for the island. If not, the settlers were prepared to fight, as a 1709 report indicated a discovery of a cache of arms and ammunition on the island.⁶

The Earles

The Earles are generally considered to be the first permanent settlers of Bay Roberts. John Sr.’s youngest son, William, was born on Little Bell Island on May 24, 1709, and eventually settled in Jugglers Cove at the mouth of Bay Roberts harbour. John Jr., the oldest brother, was born on May 18, 1701, and later moved to Portugal Cove, where he died on March 7, 1783. George, the middle brother, was born June 27, 1703, and although his date of death is not known, it is believed that he predeceased his father, who died at Lance Cove, Bell Island, in 1750. George’s name, and that of his sister, was conspicuously absent from their father’s will, while their brothers inherited considerable amounts of property and money.⁷

In a lecture on the history of Bay Roberts on January 24, 1865, the local Church of England minister, Rev. Martin Blackmore, said that a headstone in Jugglers Cove showed that William Earle had died of smallpox in 1777. Although the Earles were probably the first permanent settlers in Bay Roberts, the town had been used by migratory fishermen many years earlier. They arrived to take advantage of the large harbour and utilized fishing rooms—areas of good beach which allowed for the curing of fish without the use of flakes. A local legend refers to what is believed to be a Norse inscription on the cliff over Scogglin’s Gulch, a mini-fjord in the Jugglers Cove area.⁸ This inscription was mentioned by Robert Traill Spence Lowell in The New Priest in Conception Bay (1858).

Early Maps

At the time of the Earles’ arrival, the settlement was said to be known as Baie de Robert. However, Henry Southwood’s 1675 map of the Avalon Peninsula shows Bay Roberts, and a 1677 map of the Avalon Peninsula shows the town as Bay Roberts, located in the Bay of Consumtion.⁹ In 1689, Bay Roberts was listed on Thornton’s Map of the Trading Part of Newfoundland in the seventeenth-century publication English Pilot, fourth edition (London, 1689). The English Pilot was an atlas printed between 1689 and 1794 and its charts clearly show Bay Roberts. This publication was the first wholly British atlas depicting the seacoast from South America to Newfoundland; it described the shoals, banks, tides, currents, and courses and directions between places. It was published by mapmaker John Thornton and printer William Fisher. Of the thirty-seven editions of this atlas, only two copies of the first edition are extant. On the 1780 Royal French map, Bay Roberts is shown as R. Robert, with the name being transferred to the river. As there are no rivers of any significance in Bay Roberts, this may have referred to a small stream flowing into the harbour (likely one from Country Road, then known as Country Path.) The 1792 French map shows the French name of Baye de Robert.¹⁰ Whether the community was referred to as the English Bay Roberts or the French Baie de Robert is a moot point, because nothing was lost in the translation. A suggestion that the community was known as Bay of Robbers because of the many pirates in the area during the 1500s and 1600s is untrue. The town is believed to have been named by a Jersey trader named Robert who settled in Bay Roberts in the 1500s, according to H. W. Lemessurier, a historian of Jersey descent.¹¹ Migratory fishermen from the English county of Devon and Jersey, one of the Channel Islands, are believed to have used the harbour as their base in the 1500s, before John Guy established his colony in nearby Cupids. Before the end of the sixteenth century, there were initial attempts at settlement in Conception Bay. There were, at that time, merchants and fishing rooms in Harbour Grace, Carbonear, Brigus, and Bay Roberts, and permanent homes for fishing crews.¹² Spaniards may have visited the area as early as 1588. Historical records indicate that fishermen may have spent the winter of 1605 in Bay Roberts, probably using an area known as Beachy Cove and an island, later to be known as Fergus Island, at the mouth of the harbour.

Migratory fishermen from Brittany and Normandy also fished the area in the 1500s and were responsible for the proliferation of French place names: Baie de Robert (Bay Roberts), Havre de Grace (Harbour Grace), Port de Grave, and Priaulx Hill in Bay Roberts. Two men named John and Thomas Priautx are listed in Governor Gower’s Plantation Book of 1805. The names had been entered in 1786, and it is possible that Priaulx Hill may be named after them, although with a change of spelling, or after another family named Priaulx. By the late sixteenth century, the English comprised the majority of European fishermen. Those with English surnames such as French, Mercer, Badcock, and Bradbury possessed properties in Jugglers Cove in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and in the twenty-first century their names are widespread throughout Newfoundland and Labrador.

Early Planters

Anthony Varder from Bristol, England, one of the area’s first planters, lived in Bay Roberts from 1675 to 1708.¹³ He is listed in the 1677 Newfoundland census for Bay Roberts as Arthur Varden (although it is believed to be the same person), with a wife, a son, and a daughter, and with eleven men in his employ. He obtained considerable properties in the Bay Roberts and Port de Grave areas and apparently became quite wealthy. By 1714 he had retired and returned to Bedminster, Somerset, near Bristol, England. He left a plantation in Bay Roberts to his daughter Ann Rork and another at Port de Grave to a second daughter, Elizabeth Brady, wife of Jacob Brady of Bristol.¹⁴ Elizabeth, however, did not remain in Newfoundland, but returned to Bedminster to be with her father. The Bristol Records Office has among its records an account book of Anthony Varder, a West Country merchant with Bristol connections containing 46 pages of business accounts (1697-1705) including some relating to his trade with Newfoundland and four pages of personal accounts (1702-1713).¹⁵

The Colonial Office Records of 1674 mention a Jean Clay (with a boat and four men in her employ) and her child as being a planter in Bay Roberts. However, the 1677 census mentions a widow Jane Clay, who had two boats and eight men. She is referred to as Joan Clay by Peter E. Pope.¹⁶ Pope attributes Clay’s success to the fact that she also raised sixteen head of cattle. He notes that one of Clay’s employees was a man named Gabriell Viddomas, a long-time Carbonear fishing servant. Viddomas recalled that, in 1620, in all the Newfoundland, nott [sic] above five families. He used family in its original sense of those who served a household, that is, he was recalling fishing plantations and not kin groups. Jean Clay was not listed in the 1681 census because she had probably remarried.

Westward Movement

Jugglers Cove, thought to have been named because of the dexterity needed to manoeuvre a boat close to its shores, remained mainly residential and without a church or a school. It was populated mostly by Earle families until it was abandoned in 1925. At that time the community had few amenites; the people used the services offered in Bay Roberts (a separate area to the west). Many families had left the community by 1925 to settle in nearby areas as well as in Carbonear and Portugal Cove, leaving only Stephen Earle’s widow, Mary, and her ten-year-old twin sons, William and Moses, in the cove. They left later in 1925 to live in Bay Roberts. The westward migration had begun shortly after the second French invasion in 1705 towards French and Mercer’s Coves and resulted in the settlement of the entire harbour towards the Coish¹⁷ area, Country Path, Cold East Point, and Spaniard’s Bay Pond.

A small family cemetery in Jugglers Cove became the subject of much attention in the early 1990s, due to the efforts of the Bay Roberts Heritage Society, which unearthed many historic headstones and meticulously preserved the area. A large boulder with an embedded iron ring that was used to secure boats to the shore is a symbol of the resourcefulness and ingenuity required to survive in such a harsh environment.

In 1995, the Jugglers Cove and neighbouring French Cove area was given protection by the town as a heritage district. The Bay Roberts Heritage Society also developed a scenic walking trail through the area, known as the Shoreline Heritage Walk.

An interesting but minor connection between Bay Roberts and Little Bell Island is related to the name Mercer, which has always been the most common surname in Bay Roberts. It is believed that the first family in Bay Roberts by that name came via Little Bell Island. A native of Ringwood, England, Charles Mercer lived on the island along with Port de Grave refugees in 1706, one year after the second French raid. He later moved to Mercer’s Cove, which is believed to have been previously occupied by Jersey fishermen. Later arrivals included the Badcocks, Snows, Elms, and Russells, all originally from England.

After the Earles, the Frenches were the next family to move into the area. According to 1764 Colonial Records, they had held property there since 1634. Edward French may have arrived in the area around 1750, and French Cove was supposedly named after him. Edward, born in 1737, ran a shipping company until his death in 1783. His son, also named Edward, ran the company until approximately 1800 and had his business headquarters at Bay Roberts.

Before Edward French Sr.’s arrival, the community, later to be known as French Cove, had been destroyed by the French. In the late 1700s, French Cove was listed as a separate community. William Newman of Newmans, a noted British business, owned fishing premises there prior to 1771. The Newmans are said to have owned Bell Island for a while as well as numerous properties throughout other parts of Conception Bay, which they acquired from payments of debts. William Newman was a merchant from Dartmouth, Devon, England, and he and his brother-in-law, Holesworth Roope, later formed Newman & Roope Co. and ran the business until the partnership dissolved in 1788. Their French Cove property was sold to a Mr. Snow, who had arrived sometime around 1750. William Newman afterwards managed the Port de Grave operations of the company, while Roope took over the St. John’s branch.¹⁸

French Cove, like Jugglers Cove, also became part of the Heritage Trail, but, by the turn of the twentieth century, it was a bustling fishing community. In addition to Earles and Frenches, some of whom had moved westward from Jugglers Cove, others were registered landowners in Mercer’s Cove in the 1600s: William Badcock (1663); James and William Parsons (1665); Charles, Thomas, and Edward Mercer (1682); and Abraham Bradbury (1689). A headstone showing the name Mary Merser, wife of Charles, was discovered in 1991. She had died in 1773.

Another William Badcock was reported as living on land in 1767 that his family had possessed for 104 years, which coincides with the date of the Badcocks’ arrival in 1663.

Solomon Mercer was born in Mercer’s Cove in the late 1700s, although other branches of the family arrived from Jersey in the 1700s and from Poole, Dorset, England, around 1810. With the arrival of these families, many of whom have descendants in the town in the twenty-first century, Bay Roberts was born. The prime fishing rooms at Jugglers, French and Mercer’s Coves were now occupied by English arrivals and new immigrants had to settle farther west and away from the life-sustaining fishing grounds. In later years, an Irishman, Mark Delaney, and the Russell, Wilcox, and Snow families settled on the flats at the west end of the harbour. Mark Delaney and William Elms, who is believed to have arrived around 1750, moved to the bottom of the harbour (Coish) in 1807. Russell family tradition notes that three brothers—Edward, Stephen, and William—from Bristol, England, settled around 1800, although it is believed that Abraham Russell was born in Mercer’s Cove in the late 1700s. Other early arrivals included the Bradbury, Churchill, Crane, Jones, Murrin, Norman, Petten, Pike, and Sparkes families, who came in the early 1700s and early 1800s.

The area around North Waters in the central area of Bay Roberts was settled by the Marshall, Churchill, Roberts, Hardy, Dawson, Pepper, Collins, and North families and had 100 residents in 1800. There were several families in Jugglers Cove, six in French Cove, two or three in Beachy Cove, six between there and Whit Monday Hill¹⁹ near Mercer’s Cove, three in Mercer’s Cove, and six from there to the Coish.

The French, Mercer, and Parsons families mostly stayed in the area from Mercer’s Cove east to Jugglers Cove but, by 1800, when the population of Bay Roberts had reached 1,000, a fairly wide path ran from Jugglers Cove to the Coish and even farther westward to Country Path and Spaniard’s Bay Pond.

Bay Roberts grew considerably between 1836 and 1850—it doubled its population. By 1845 there were nearly 1,800 residents, two large churches (Anglican and Wesleyan), and four schools. About 70 per cent of the population were Anglican; the remainder, Wesleyan and Roman Catholic. The town’s economy was based on the inshore, Labrador, and seal fisheries and was well-known as the home of the Labrador-going fishermen. Eighteen vessels pursued the seal hunt and personal incomes were supplemented by farming and cattle raising. About 600 people prosecuted the Labrador fishery.

From its infancy, Bay Roberts showed promise as a viable fishing centre and later as a commercial hub. Colonial Records indicate that in 1675, before a permanent settlement was established, there were twenty-eight people and thirty head of cattle. These early planters, and shortly thereafter, settlers, were fishermen who laboured in the inshore fishery. This explains the settling of the three coves on the easternmost point, and why many would not move farther up the harbour—they would lose their ideal fishing rooms close to the fishing grounds. It was not until the eighteenth century that both the Labrador and seal fisheries would become significant and force the utilization of the entire harbour.²⁰

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1 Spellings used in this book are those found in Gazetteer of Canada. Newfoundland and Labrador (Ottawa, 1968), published by authority of the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical Names [by] Geographical Services Division, Department of Energy Mines and Resources Canada, 1968. These vary slightly from the spellings commonly used (Juggler’s); also French’s Cove is used locally and on tourist brochures, but French Cove in the Gazetteer.

2 Alan F. Williams, Father Baudoin’s War: d’Iberville’s Campaigns in Acadia and Newfoundland, 1696, 1697 (St. John’s: Department of Geography, Memorial University of Newfoundland, c.1987).

3 Lloyd C. Rees, An Outport Revisited, Lance Cove Bell Island, Newfoundland, www.lancecove.webs.com/page14.html(March 31, 2011).

4 D. W. Prowse, A History of Newfoundland from the English, Colonial and Foreign Records (with a prefatory note by Edmund Gosse) (London and New York: MacMillan and Co., 1895).

5 Walter R. Smith, Part of the Past of Portugal Cove, Newfoundland Quarterly (June 1902), 7-8.

6 Gerald Andrews, Heritage of a Newfoundland Outport: The Story of Port de Grave (St. John’s, NL: Jesperson Publishing, 1997).

7 Rees, Last Will and testament of John Earle, An Outport Revisited, www.lancecove.webs.com/index.htm (March 15, 2011).

8 The origin of the word Scogglin is unknown. It is not likely a Norse word but is probably a variation of the English surname Scoggin, which has its origin in Middle English and is used to describe stunted foliage growth.

9 Centre for Newfoundland Studies, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

10 Michael Francis Howley, Newfoundland Name-Lore, Newfoundland Quarterly (April 1935), 27.

11 H. W. Lemessurier, The Early Relations Between Newfoundland and the Channel Islands, The Geographical Review 2 (December 1916).

12 L. E. F. English, The Jersey Men, Newfoundland Quarterly (December 1950), 18.

13 Colonial Office (CO), 1/35, 1/38, 1/41, 194/4 censuses.

14 W. Gordon Handcock, So longe as there comes noe women (Milton, ON: Global Heritage Press, c.2003).

15 Account Book of Anthony Varder, senior (a West Country merchant with Bristol connections, 1697-1713. Ref. No. AC/B/64. www.archives.bristol.gov.uk/dserve(April 2, 2011).

16 Peter E. Pope, Fish into Wine: The Newfoundland Plantation in the Seventeenth Century (University of North Carolina Press, c.2004).

17 The Coish is the name given to the western end of Bay Roberts harbour. It was first mentioned in the census of 1857. It is defined in Gaelic dictionaries as beside, such as beside the seashore.

18 Andrews, Heritage, 22.

19 Whit Monday Hill is named after the day following Whit Sunday or Pentecost, which celebrates the birth of the Christian church.

20 Elizabeth Jerrett et al. History: Bay Roberts, Decks Awash (January-February 1991), 3-18.

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Expansion

Coley’s Point

The early settlement pattern of Bay Roberts was not unlike that of other places on the island of Newfoundland. The early settlers of Jugglers, French, and Mercer’s Coves, most of whom were English, claimed and occupied the prime properties suitable for their fishing enterprises. The later arrivals, including the Irish, were forced to sail farther in the harbour and away from the prime fishing grounds. Although the pattern was the same for hundreds of settlements, Bay Roberts had an advantage in its large, deep harbour, the relatively flat landscape west of Mercer’s Cove on the harbour’s north side toward Country Road, and the fertile grounds of nearby Spaniard’s Bay Pond and the Gully. These two areas were later renamed Shearstown and Butlerville respectively.

The south side of Bay Roberts harbour, an area known as Coley’s Point, was an ideal location for settlement. The name Coley’s Point is believed to have been derived from the community’s original name of Cold East Point, the name used by the United States hydrographic office in the late nineteenth century.¹ Other theories have generally been discarded. There is a reference to Cole Lees Point in the mid-1700s, and, according to another local story, it was named for a man named Collie who lived at the point’s eastern end and who is said to have arrived from Britain. His name has not been found in any records.

Archbishop Michael Francis Howley (1843-1914), the first native Roman Catholic archbishop of the ecclesiastical province of Newfoundland, gave his explanation of the name:

Mr. Shortis of the GPO, to whom I am indebted for a great deal of information concerning these localities informs me that this point was originally called Coldest Point. That the first settlers were Daveys and Snows (a very appropriate place for these latter). In the Sailing Directions it is called Cold East Point. There is still a place there called Davey’s Head.²

Many of the early arrivals in Coley’s Point came from England and a few from Ireland. Some of these, such as the Dawes, originally settled at neighbouring Port de Grave but eventually moved to Coley’s Point to take advantage of the superior harbour. The Dawes utilized the harbour for their fishing interests and later for the transportation and storage of coal and salt.

Early settlement can be traced back to the late 1700s, when T. M. Russell and John Churchill arrived from Jersey. Churchill was formerly a Port de Grave planter whose land was acquired by Edward, John, and William Snow before 1798. Edward Kelly settled before 1799, one of fifty residents listed in 1800. William North settled near Long Beach around 1810, and later sold his land to William Littlejohn of Ippleton, Devon, England.

Peter Fradsham and James Bowering from Chard, Somerset, England, were inshore fishermen who had settled on the south side of Coley’s Point by 1812. The north side was first settled by James Goosney in 1824, then by George Greenland in 1826. Greenland, listed as a fisherman in 1841, was the son of the Church of England minister in Chard. He purportedly fled his father’s wrath about a misdeed by taking the first available vessel to Newfoundland. Another immigrant from Chard, William Chard, also