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1 Aug. 1901: Judge Thomas R. Bennett dies at Harbour Grace.

1 Aug. 1933: Bellanca aircraft leaves Harbour Grace for New York, USA.

2 Aug 1880: Sir Thomas Roddick marries Urelia Marion Fraser McKinnon in Montreal.

2 Aug. 1866: Thomas Harrison Ridley hosts a gala at Ridley Hall to celebrate the landing of the cable in Hearts Content.

2 Aug. 1930: City of New York aircraft, piloted by H.J. Brown and John Henry Mears, arrives in Harbour Grace.

3 Aug. 1910: On August 3, 1910, the SS Colonia diverts the company’s 1874 Ballinskelligs, Ireland, cable to Harbour Grace, its new location (pictured above). By terminating the western end of its cable in Newfoundland rather than Nova Scotia, the company doubled the speed of their telegraph transmissions, thus allowing twice the number of messages to be carried.

6 Aug. 1885: Members of the Harbour Grace Bicycle Club leave at 7:45 a.m. for St. John’s. They arrive in the capital at 7:15 p.m. that evening, a distance of 70 miles, including stops, in 11 hours and 45 minutes. They cover the last stage of their journey, from Topsail to St. John’s, in 1 hour and 10 minutes.

8 Aug. 1927: Work begins on construction of the Harbour Grace airstrip.

8 Aug. 1933: White Eagle aircraft, piloted by brothers Benjamin and Joseph Adamowitz, arrives in Harbour Grace. The plane later crashed on takeoff.

10 Aug. 1916: Death of Julia (Parsons) Gordon, proprietor of the Gordon Lodge. She is buried at the United Church Cemetery, Harbour Grace. Read more: Obituary, Harbour Grace Standard.

12 Aug. 1822: William Eppes Cormack and guide Joseph Sylvester arrive in Harbour Grace from Spread Eagle, Trinity Bay. They sleep at “Fox’s,” a “good, clean house” in town.

14 Aug. 1575: Robert Hayman baptized, son of Nicholas Hayman and Alice Gaverocke. Read more: Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

14 Aug. 1819: Sir Henry Pynn present at a meeting of the Outinian Society, nineteenth-century society for singles. Pynn would meet his wife, Cecilia Jackson (later Lady Pynn), here. He later married her in 1821.

14 Aug. 1852: Mutual Insurance Society established.

15 Aug. 1731: Rev. James Balfour born in the parish of Banchory-Ternan, Scotland. Read more: Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

15 Aug. 1874: Temperance Hall, called “the most sightly and ornate of our modern wooden structures,” formerly opens in Harbour Grace.

17 Aug. 1944: Third ‘Great Fire’ of Harbour Grace.

17 Aug. 1944: Harbour Grace United Church, fourth Methodist church, burns during third ‘Great Fire’ of Harbour Grace.

18 Aug. 1832: First ‘Great Fire’ of Harbour Grace. Flames were spread quickly by the wind, soon reaching a building which had gun-powder in the loft. The explosion which followed sent embers in all directions causing fires to break out in several other locations. This fire was devastating, and it almost destroyed the entire business community, as only three mercantile establishments survived. Also claimed by the fire were several retail stores, the Episcopalian Church, three hotels, a dozen public houses, and 100 homes. Over 600 people were left homeless. The fire notably burned the Anglican Church and Robert Crocker Bray’s house.

19 Aug. 1861: Harbour Grace Volunteer Regiment assemble on the Parade Grounds, near Military Rd. 62 officers and men are present.

20 Aug. 1862: Volunteer Rifle Corps have special turnout; prizes are awarded. Captain John Hayward, Lieutenant Henry Moore, John Strathie, Luke Fallon, William Duff, James Ash, and George Howell score bulls eyes.

21 Aug. 1993: Spirit of Harbour Grace donated to the Town of Harbour Grace by Roger Pike.

23 Aug. 1829: Robert Stewart Munn born in Bute, Scotland. Read more: Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

24 Aug. 1932: Green Mountain Boy aircraft, with pilots Clyde A. Lee and John Bochon, arrives in Harbour Grace.

25 Aug. 1932: Green Mountain Boy aircraft leaves for Oslo, Norway.

26 Aug. 1874: Dr. Dearlin lays report of the Select Committee in relation to the proposed railway to Harbour Grace on the table of the House of Assembly.

26 Aug. 1927: William S. Brock & Edward Schlee arrive at Harbour Grace in the Pride of Detroit. Read more: Pride of Detroit, and Harbour Grace.

27 Aug. 1769: Sir Henry Pynn born.

27 Aug. 1903: John Shannon Munn donates Shannon Park for recreational sports.

27 Aug. 1927: Brock & Schlee leave Harbour Grace in the Pride of Detroit.

28 Aug. 1816: Church of England church in Harbour Grace burned. Arson suspected, and the magistrates offer 100 guineas for information.

28 Aug. 1832: Governor Henry Prescott lays the cornerstone at St. Paul’s Church.

28 Aug. 1932: Sikorsky Amphibian aircraft, with crew of Ralph Wickford, William Calder, and Louis L’Esperance, arrives in Harbour Grace

29 Aug. 1932: American poet Elizabeth Bishop walks from Brigus to Clarke’s Beach, Bay Roberts, Spaniard’s Bay and Harbour Grace. She lodges at the Cochrane House, Harbour Grace, run by Rose “Rosie” Archibald. Read more: Elizabeth Bishop in Newfoundland: ‘Sad, Still and Foreign.’

29 Aug. 1950: Rev. Walter H. Macabe dedicates and opens the present-day Coughlan United Church, the fifth Methodist church in Harbour Grace.

30 Aug. 1932: Sikorsky Amphibian aircraft leaves Harbour Grace for New York, USA.

30 Aug. 1830: Foundation stone of courthouse laid by Magistrate Thomas Danson, Chief of North District.

30 Aug. 1844: Teachers at the Mechanics Institute in Liverpool, England, toast John Irving Roddick before he leaves for his next appointment: Headmaster of the Harbour Grace Grammar School. Read more: Profile: John Irving Roddick, Headmaster of the Harbour Grace Grammar School.

31 Aug. 1788: First official Methodist church opened in Harbour Grace by John Stretton, on his own property on today’s Stretton’s Hill (“at the foot of Stretton’s Hill”).

31 Aug. 1852: Town first lit with gas.

Pictured: Hampshire Cottage (Garrison House), Harbour Grace, ca. 1900. Constructed for John Bayley, a wealthy lawyer and a sub-collector of customs, on the former Webber plantation, Hampshire Cottage is one of the oldest homes still standing in Harbour Grace.

Photo courtesy of a recent donation to the Conception Bay Museum archives.

On September 18, 1936, the Lady Peace aircraft arrived at Harbour Grace from Musgrave Harbour at 7:00 p.m. NT. Its pilots, Dick Merrill and Harry Richman, had crashed landed in Man Point Marsh in the latter community and were rescued by Capt. Ed Rickerbacker, the famous World War I flying ace. Also at the airstrip were The Great Silver Fleet, a Douglas DC-2 aircraft, and three news planes from New York and Boston; this number – five – was the largest concentration of aircraft at the airstrip in its nine-year history.

This post is part of the Harbour Grace Notebook series. Follow the updates on social media with the hashtag #hgnotebook. 

Pictured: Joseph Ross at his storefront, a grocery located across from Bannerman St, Harbour Grace, adjacent to the east of the old post office. A prominent landmark business in downtown Harbour Grace, Ross’s store is visible in many photographs profiling the Water Street area in the early twentieth century.

Photo courtesy of a recent donation to the Conception Bay Museum archives.

Event: Guided Walk to Gibbet Hill with author Patrick J. Collins

Join Patrick J. Collins on a guided walk to the site of one of Harbour Grace’s most gruesome incidents, Gibbet Hill. Learn about the principal actors in this sordid tale, the hanged man Peter Downing, the duped maidservant Ellen Coombs, and the treacherous criminal who escaped scot-free, Patrick Malone. Also, Collins will speak about his latest book, The Secret of the Fairy Ring, a story of one girl’s encounter with fairies and her family’s fight with a recalcitrant Harbour Grace, in the shadow of building the community’s first aerodrome in 1919.

Copies of Gibbet Hill, The Secret of the Fairy Ring, and Collins’s other books will be available for purchase.

Date: Sunday, September 22, 2019

Admission: $5.00 per person

Location: Hike starts at the intersection of Kane’s Rd and Lady Lake Rd, Harbour Grace, NL (GPS Coordinates)

Time: 2:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Pictured: The Maples, ca. 1910. The house was built around 1900 for Willis Davis, a Harbour Grace businessman, as a summer home. He bequeathed the property to Elizabeth Simmons, his sister, after his death.

Photo courtesy of a recent donation to the Conception Bay Museum archives.

Pictured: Harbour Grace, looking west toward Riverhead, ca. 1910

Photo courtesy a recent donation to the Conception Bay Museum archives.

Photo: LeMarchant Street, Harbour Grace, ca. 1950. The old St. Paul’s Hall is visible at the top of the street.

Photo courtesy Mac Lee Collection/Conception Bay Museum/Harbour Grace Public Library.

Pictured: Connecting the underground cable to Ridley Hall, August 1910.

Photo courtesy Conception Bay Museum archives.