Silk Sails

by Calvin Evans

  A pattern of speculation emerges even from the earliest records. The Winsor women of Aquaforte both owned shares in the ship Pelter as early as 1844. Charlotte Colelough, spinster of St. John’s, bought shares along with 15 other people in the ship Sybil in 1852. Charlotte is also noted to be a “co-partner in trade.” Ruth Orr Church, married woman of St. John’s, purchased 1 share in the Frances E. Moulton in 1923, and Meta Boals Orr purchased 5 shares from her husband, John B. Orr, in the same ship in 1926, 3 shares in the Ena A. Moulton, 3 shares in the Catherine M. Moulton, 1 share in the Enid E. Legge, and 1 share in the Jean Wakely, all in the same year: 1926. This pattern continued. Eva McIsaac, married woman of Searston, Grand River, bought 1 share in the Jean Wakely in 1920 and was still holding it in 1925. Elizabeth Findlater, married woman of St. John’s, bought 1 share in each of the Ena A. Moulton, the Enid A. Legge, and the Jean Wakely in 1921.

  Mary A. Rose, merchant of Harbour Breton (a later hand crossed out this occupation and wrote in “married woman”), bought 1 share in the Gordon E. Moulton in May 1921 and sold it in August 1922 to John T. Moulton. Mary Stewart was from Burgeo; she married John Rose of Little Bay and they settled in Harbour Breton; Mary was always referred to formally in the community as “Mrs. John Rose”; they had no children. They were the owners of the famous Sunny Cottage (the community museum today), and together they ran a business which consisted of buying and shipping fish, selling groceries and antiques, and coasting – carrying lumber and picking up salmon on the Labrador and taking it to North Sydney. Mary assisted with the business.

  Then there were the Grand Bank women who are worthy of note as speculators and joint owners. There was no other place in Newfoundland that saw such a concentration of women buying shares in ships. Women buying shares occurred particularly after 1920 when the large three-masted foreign-going ships were being built in Grand Bank and the surrounding areas. It is apparent that the women of Grand Bank wanted in on the action.

  Sarah W. Clarke bought 3 shares in the Max Horton, William Forsey’s ship, in 1920. Her daughter, Georgina T. Clarke, stenographer, also bought 3 shares. Incidentally, Sarah’s husband, Lionel, merchant, also bought 3 shares, and her son Roy, clerk, bought 2 shares. Sarah was a Tucker, originally from Carbonear. She also held 5 shares in the General Trenchard in 1923. Georgina later married an Elliott and settled in Corner Brook. Charlotte Pratt Harris bought 5 shares in her husband George Chesley Harris’ ship, the General Woods in 1921 and another 2 shares in the same ship in 1926. She was still holding these shares in 1938. Charlotte was the sister of E. J. Pratt, famous Newfoundland poet, and the daughter of Rev. John Pratt, Methodist minister, who died during his tenure at Grand Bank. Charlotte was a trained singer, had no children, and died suddenly at age 70 on September 8, 1956. Sophie Knight, spinster, bought 2 shares in the General Woods in 1922; she died in 1926. Her brother Archibald was one of the executors of her will.

  Emily Dunford, married woman, bought 1 share in the General Woods in 1922 (which she was still holding in 1938) and 1 share in the General Plumer in 1927. Her husband was George, a salesman. Emily was the daughter of Samuel and Mary Harris and sister of Eleanor Carr and Mary Forsey Harris. She attended Mount Allison University, had two children, and died on October 22, 1948. Mary E. Kelland, widow of Lamaline, (we will consider her here as a Grand Bank woman) purchased 1 share in the General Smuts and was still holding it in 1925, the last date of record. Priscilla Noseworthy of Fortune (a Grand Bank neighbour) bought 21 shares in the Alhambia in 1930 and sold them two years later. She was obviously a speculator. Mary Forsey Harris, spinster and daughter of Samuel and Mary (Forsey) Harris bought 5 shares in the General Plumer after her father, the owner, died in 1926; in 1927 she bought 5 shares in the General Trenchard, and she held 1 share in the General Woods from 1927 until at least 1938. She also attended Mount Allison University. She died in Toronto in the 1970s.

  Harriet Marion Harris, widow of Grand Bank, purchased 5 shares in the General Gough in 1927; she was still holding these in 1931. She bought 2 shares in the General Woods in 1927 and was still holding these in 1938. Harriet was the daughter of George Harding of Grand Bank and she became the second wife of Samuel Harris after his first wife, Mary, died in 1913. Harriet Marion died on February 25, 1951.

  Eleanor Hickman Harris Carr, married woman, bought 1 share in the General Woods in 1927 and was still holding it in 1938, and bought 3 shares in the General Plumer in 1927. Eleanor Carr graduated from Mount Allison University with a B.A. and then earned her R.N. at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Percival Carr had come to Grand Bank as treasurer and business manager of Samuel and George Harris’ business firm. Eleanor and Percy were married in 1920. They had six children and owned the famous Clawbonnie Estate, midway between Grand Bank and Fortune. When her husband died in 1943 Eleanor moved to Toronto and later worked as a nursing supervisor in an Ottawa hospital. She died in Toronto in 1975.

  Jane Forsey, married woman, bought 2 shares in the General Woods in 1937 and was still holding these in 1938. Her husband was Capt. Steve Will Forsey. Jane was a Banfield and was born at Garnish. Mary Durey of Marystown inherited 1 share in the General Woods when her husband Patrick died in 1937; she was still holding this share in 1938.

  There were other Grand Bank women who held shares in ships. Sarah Patten was the daughter of John B. Patten and Elizabeth (Hickman) Patten and was born in 1895. After she matriculated in Grand Bank she attended Shaw’s Business School in Toronto. She returned to Grand Bank to take charge of the office work for the Samuel Harris firm. She then became the accountant at her father’s business, J. B. Patten & Sons. In 1927 she married George Foote and they had five children. When her father died in 1927, she and her brother were appointed executors. They jointly held the 32 shares which they inherited in the Lillian M. Richard and sold them after three years. In 1948 Sarah bought 9 shares in the Arawana and re-sold these after four years. Also in 1948 she bought 16 shares in the A. & R. Martin; this vessel was lost off Lamaline in 1952. She moved to London, Ontario, with her husband in 1981 and died there in 1982 at the age of 87.

  Esther Linda Foote, married woman, bought 10 shares in the AntonC. Santos in 1927 and was still holding these in 1939. Esther was the daughter of Simeon and Grace Tibbo; her husband was Ambrose. They had five children and she died in 1968. Emma Louise Foote was the widow of John B. Foote when she bought 9 shares in the Anton C. Santos in 1927. She died without a will in 1935 and Letters of Administration were granted to her brother-in-law, Ambrose Foote, and he sold the shares. Emma was the sister of Charles Forward of the firm of Forward & Tibbo. She and her husband had five children and she died in 1935.

  For more women Joint Owners see Appendix A.

  There were several varieties of joint ownership and it will be useful to look at some of these.

  Owning Ships Jointly with Husbands

  The Newfoundland ship registers do not make clear the husband-wife relationship when these are joint owners. In many cases, confirmation had to be sought elsewhere; and in several cases it is a best guess. When these cases are a duplication of previous and subsequent references, a concerted effort has been made to give only minimal information.

  Caroline Winsor of Aquaforte was a partner with Jane Winsor and four Winsor males in the ship Pelter in 1844. It is known that Caroline’s husband was Dan Henry Winsor and one of the male owners is Henry Winsor, a master mariner. It is assumed that this is Caroline’s husband. On the other hand, it is known that Julia Kelligrew and her husband William, along with John Goodridge, were joint owners of the schooner Ann in 1853. The same is true of Elizabeth and John Pond of Greenspond in 1866, as we saw earlier, in their ship Edward & Lydia, but the marriage record had to be ascertained from another source.

  It is also assumed that Ann J. Tuck of Fortune is the wife of John Tuck, the builder and captain of the George A. Tuck in 1886. Ellen Roach, trader of Branch, St. Mary’s Bay, was a partner with William and Henry Roach in the ship Fleetwing in 1887; Ellen was th
e wife of Henry, the builder and captain. So also with Emma Wheeler and Symeon Wheeler of Frenchman’s Cove, Bay of Islands, in 1896, with their vessel Spring Bird. Martha Benson, married woman of Little Bay Islands, owned the St. Elmo with Reuben, Arthur, and Jonathan J. Benson when it was first registered in 1898 and re-registered in 1912. One of these men was almost certainly her husband, probably Jonathan, since Martha’s name appears as the second owner, immediately after his in the register. Each of the four held 16 shares. They sold the ship on June 12, 1914.

  Margaret Kennedy, married woman of Carbonear, and William John Kennedy, planter, bought the 106-ton Pioneer from William A. Munn of St. John’s in 1900; it was abandoned at sea on December 18, 1902, off the Labrador coast. That same year Margaret sold her ship Pride of the North to Dugald Munn. By March 1913 Margaret was a widow and she bought the Winnie F. Tuck from Patrick J. Shea. This vessel was “totally lost” at Emily Harbour, Labrador, on October 1, 1919. It seems safe to assume that William John had been Margaret’s husband. It should be noted that even after she was widowed she continued to be involved in the Labrador fishery.

  Margaret Stone of Rocky Brook, Trinity Bay, who has already been discussed as a sole owner, must have been an entrepreneur, because in 1906 she bought 6 shares in the H. W. Stone and she also owned 11 shares in the Maggie Stone, and her husband Emmanuel owned the other 53. Mary Margaret Cooper was born at Bluff Head Cove, Trinity Bay, in 1861. She was the grandmother of Capt. Harry Stone, who described her in 1995 in the following way: “She was all go, she was very involved in everything, a very determined woman; she would take a horse into the woods for a load of wood; in the spring of each year she would walk from Rocky Brook to St. John’s; it would take a week; she had little education but she could read.” The walk from Rocky Brook to St. John’s must have been in the very early years, because the Free Press for 1912 to 1914 indicates that Margaret and her husband were making regular spring and fall trips to St. John’s in their schooners to purchase summer and winter supplies, sending their loaded schooners home, and taking a leisurely trip home themselves by the express train. In March 1914 Emmanuel brought Margaret to St. John’s for surgery at the General Hospital. She died in 1918 at age 57. Curiously both she and her husband died without wills.

  There is a long hiatus between the Stones and other married couples becoming joint owners on the south and south-west coasts. There it became commonplace for husband and wife to be joint owners. Joint ownership by husband and wife is particularly focused in the Rose Blanche and Harbour Le Cou areas. In 1944 Gordon Lewis Skinner and Pearl Melita Skinner of Rose Blanche were joint owners of the Doris A. Neal, a fishing schooner. Gabriel Billard and Bessie Billard of Rose Blanche bought the Calvin Anne in 1943 and re-sold it in 1948 to George Robert Durnford and May Durnford of Francois. Though her husband died in 1949, May held on to the ship until 1960 when she sold it. Edwin H. Hardy and Clara Theresa Hardy of Rose Blanche bought the Emma H. in 1945. Clara had been designated as “housewife” in the original registry, but this was crossed out by a later hand and “married woman” was written in. Martin Collier and Mary Elizabeth Collier of Rose Blanche bought the Chesley Russell in 1943 and sold it in 1956, having held it for a total of 13 years. John William Wells and Alice Wells of Rose Blanche bought the Melita Wells in 1944 and sold it in 1955. Already noted in Chapter 1 is the case of Henry and Myrtle Hatcher of Rose Blanche, and there were at least six other married couples in this small town who owned fishing ships jointly and used them in the fishery for periods up to 12 years. For these cases see Appendix A.

  In nearby Harbour Le Cou the situation was similar though the numbers were not as great. There were only five women ship-owners in the small fishing village between 1926 and 1983, but the pattern of married couples owning a ship jointly is evident here also. Augustus Buckland and Phoebe Buckland bought the Dolores Kaye in 1943 and sold it to another married couple in 1947, Simeon Matthew Billard and Maud Billard, also of Harbour Le Cou. In 1946 the Bucklands bought the Carolyn Marie and sold it in 1959. Phoebe was a Herridge, and she and Gus had seven children. She arranged for the sharemen who worked with Gus to live in the house with the family during the fishing season, fed them, did their washing, and worked on the flakes making fish. In 1963 Simeon Billard registered the Austin & Dianne, a longliner of which he had been sole owner since 1960, jointly in his and Maud’s names, and they used the vessel until 1983 when it was lost at sea. Simeon handled “the business end of things,” i.e., the ship and dealing with the merchants, but he passed all the money over to Maud who handled it wisely. There were no mortgages taken on any of these ships. I expect that they had similar success in the fishery to that of Henry and Myrtle Hatcher and Simeon and Violet Blanche Butt.

  Along the south and south-west coasts the same ownership pattern emerged. At Port aux Basques Michael and Hannah Maud McDonald jointly bought the Allan Graham in 1943. They obviously moved to North Sydney in 1950 since they transferred the registry of the ship to that port. Albert and Elsie Read of La Poile bought the Coombes in 1945 from Robert Allan Newman, merchant at Petites; the fate of that vessel cannot be determined from the records. We have already noted the Durnfords of Francois.

  Before leaving the south-west coast, we should note that there was some modeling going on here. What was started by one couple became a model for many others. Joint ownership by couples made it easier to transfer full ownership to a surviving spouse; exclusive ownership may have created more difficulties. The advantage to the family of leaving everything to the wife is that no taxes were assessed in the event of the husband’s death. There also existed in many Newfoundland communities a deeply ingrained superstition about making a will; it was either postponed until death from natural causes was imminent or it was regarded in superstitious lore as a prelude to death, i.e., bad luck. Simeon Butt, for example, registered all his property in his wife’s name (ship, house, and so forth.) but did not make a will until after his wife died. The pattern of joint ownership by husband and wife became a common practice on the south-west coast, and I surmise that women’s influence both initiated and spread the pattern throughout the region.

  Owning Ships Jointly with Other Women

  There are several cases of women owning ships jointly with other women, and they fall into two categories: two women own a ship with one or more men; two or more women jointly own a ship. There were only two instances of the first. Mary Howell and Jane Gould, widows and administratrixes to the estate of the late William Howell of Carbonear, were partners with William Willis Bemister when their 84-ton ship Benjamin was registered in 1839. The ship had been rebuilt before it was re-registered in 1839; it was totally lost in 1870 and it appears that both women retained ownership of their joint 32 shares during this period. As was seen earlier, Caroline Winsor, married woman, and Jane Winsor, spinster, were joint owners with four Winsor males at Aquaforte when the Pelter was registered in 1844.

  The first instance of the second category is joint ownership between Mary and Ann Taylor, spinsters of Carbonear, when they registered their schooner Mary & Ann (note the name) in 1870. Each held 32 shares. The ship was lost near Copper Island, Fogo, on November 16, 1870, undoubtedly on the way back from the Labrador. Emmie Wilcox and Henrietta Roberts, married women of Brigus, bought the ship Hyacinth in 1902, and it was lost near Change Islands in August 1909. Edward Murphy, planter of St. John’s, sold the Bertha May to Mary and Annie Murphy, married women, in 1905. Mary Murphy died in 1909, and Annie acquired full title to all shares. Annie took a mortgage on the ship in 1916 and it was discharged in 1919, at which time she sold the ship to Elizabeth Murphy, married woman.

  In 1909 Jane and Ellen Rideout of Bonavista Bay, married women, bought the Cecil Belle from Edward F. Harvey, St. John’s merchant, and they sold it to Job Bros. & Co. in 1915, after six years of use. Dorcas Phillips, widow, and Maggie Anstey, married woman, of Twillingate were appointed executresses for the estates of Martin and James Phillips when the two men died in January and May o
f 1927, respectively; they sold the ship Mabel after having owned it for only five months. The 56-ton schooner Pandora was bought by John and Josiah Yetman, fishermen of Harbour Grace, in 1906, and in 1909 they sold the vessel to Susannah and Minnie Yetman, married women. The women took a mortgage with John Rorke of Carbonear in 1910; the mortgage was transferred to John T. McRae, merchant at Harbour Grace, in 1913 and the mortgage was discharged in 1920. The vessel was sold as soon as the mortgage was discharged. Albert Hodder of Creston sold his ship Ernie Loretta to Lily Eliza and Sadie Pearl Hodder, married women of the same place, in 1958. They held 32 shares each. Lily Eliza was appointed the managing owner. In May 1960 Lily Eliza sold her 32 shares, and in May 1964 Sadie Pearl sold her shares.

  In April 1937 Anna Mary Manuel and Myra Maud Bennett, married women of Corner Brook, bought the 101-ton ship Dante from Baine Johnston & Co. Ltd. and sold it in October 1939. Mary Florence Forward and Eleanor Tibbo of Grand Bank each owned 32 shares in the vessel Chesley R. for more than ten years; their husbands were business partners in the firm Forward and Tibbo.

  Owning Ships Jointly with Men Who Are Not Their Husbands

  Several of these types of cases were discussed in the first section on joint ownership, for example, Mary Parsons of Clown’s Cove, Conception Bay. Mary Parsons, widow, jointly owned the ship Venus with Edward and John Parsons in 1818.

  Mary Ann Stone, widow of Greenspond, owned 32 shares in the Dash when it was registered in 1867. George Allan, planter, owned the other 32 shares. Mary Ann was the widow of Benjamin Stone and married George Wright in 1868. George Allan was married to Rachel Stone, undoubtedly Benjamin’s sister. Ada Mugford, married woman and later widow of Port de Grave, owned shares in the 43-ton Tiger from 1867 with William Mugford, Sr. (probably Ada’s husband), William Mugford, Jr., Anthony Mugford and Elijah Mugford. William Sr. died in 1872. The three remaining males sold a total of 48 shares to Ada in 1887, and they held only 16 shares among them. In 1908 they sold a total of 32 shares to Abraham Stone. This may well be a case of a woman owner with her husband and three sons. William Mugford, Sr., had two separate parcels of land at Port de Grave bequeathed to him alone and to him and his two sisters by his father’s will of 1789.