Pictured: Truck carrying fish casks from James A. Garland’s cooperage, Point of Beach, Harbour Grace, 1947.

Garland’s cooperage was once described as “one of the busiest firms in Harbour Grace.” Forty-five employees manufactured herring, cod oil, and berry barrels; fish casks and drums; salmon tierces; oil casks; Coca-Cola boxes; and a host of other wood containers carrying Newfoundland products around the world.

One of Garland’s main customers was William Azariah Munn, a leading producer of medicinal cod liver oil, whose production plant was adjacent to Garland’s cooperage. In the words of James’s son Charles, the firm “supplied [Munn’s] with thousands and thousands of barrels, each one with a tin liner. I suppose we made 160 or 170 barrels a day.”

Photo courtesy The Evening Telegram, September, 1947.

Pictured: Looking down Bannerman St, toward the old General Post Office and Strapp’s Pharmacy (right), ca. 1930. Built in the early 1910s, the old Post Office was a landmark building in downtown Harbour Grace, visible in many photographs from the first half of the twentieth century. Besides a mail and telegraph office, the grand building contained the Avalon Health Unit, the Harbour Grace Water Co., and police office.

The building was destroyed in the third ‘Great Fire’ of Harbour Grace on August 17, 1944.

Photo courtesy Jane Lynch.

Pictured: Children outside W.A. Whitman’s Tailor Shop and Strapp’s Pharmacy, near the bottom of Bannerman St, Harbour Grace, ca. 1930. The old Telegraph Office is visible in the background, on the eastern side of Bannerman St.

Photo courtesy Jane Lynch.

Pictured: Henry Corbin Watts Jr’s grocery store, Harbour Grace, ca. 1900. Photo courtesy Jane Lynch.

The following history was given to us by Linda White, archivist at Memorial University’s Archives & Special Collections:

Henry Corbin Watts (1852-1917), merchant and farmer, was born at Harbour Grace in 1852 to Claudius (1811-1908) and Mary (French) Watts (1816-1854). He was the youngest of six children. He had two sisters, Mary (1840-1917) and Zela (1842-1868), and three brothers, Fredrick (1846-1859), Horatio John (1848-1924), and Theodore (1850-1899). He died at Harbour Grace on 12 March 1917.

Corbin was educated at the Grammar School under John Irving Roddick. As an adult, he became a successful farmer, raised cattle, and participated in multiple Harbour Grace Agriculture Exhibitions. He also had a grocery business (pictured).

In 1881, Corbin, his brother-in-law James Henry Parsons, and William Glindon (clerk at Parsons’s firm) were charged with conspiracy, as they reportedly planned to cast away a vessel for the purpose of defrauding underwriters. Their plan: Corbin pretended to order a supply of goods for a trading voyage at Labrador from Parsons’ firm, J&R Parsons. That vessel embarked on the pretend voyage with a small amount of valueless cargo and, after insurance was placed on the cargo (£600), the vessel would be lost (purposely sunk) and the insurance would be recovered.

After the death of his brother, Theodore, in 1899, his sister-in-law, Jane Watts and her four children lived with Henry Corbin in Harbour Grace.

Linda White and the MUN ASC team are currently digitizing the letters of Corbin’s father, Claudius Watts.

Do you have any information on Watts’s grocery store in Harbour Grace? Contact us!

Pictured: “Harbour Grace, 1841,” a panoramic sketch by William Gosse (signed W. Gosse). Landmarks in this picture include the first Roman Catholic Church in Harbour Grace, with its 100-foot steeple, built by Rev. Thomas Ewer (Yore); the community’s stone courthouse, a National Historic Site built in 1832; Garrison House (Hampshire Cottage), Registered Heritage Structure; the stone St. Paul’s Church, a Registered Heritage Structure built in 1835; the first Customs House, a wooden-thatch roofed structure; the Methodist parsonage;  and the Point of Beach, with its attendant schooners in the harbour.

Gosse’s sketches can be found at the Provincial Archives (The Rooms) in St. John’s. Other sketches include Ship Cove (Port de Grave) and that of a Beothuk woman in 1841.

Print courtesy the Conception Bay Museum archives; donated by former MHA Hon. Haig Young, former Minister of Public Works and Transportation.

Download in high quality (1200 dpi) here: Google Drive

Event: Storytelling and Recitations with Pat Collins & Aiden Moriarty (2020 Annual Winter Carnival)

Date: Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Time: 7:00 p.m.

Location: Admiral’s Marina, Harbour Grace South, NL

Tickets: This is a free event. However, due to limited seating, a ticket is required. Tickets are available at the Town Hall, 112 Water St, Harbour Grace, during opening hours, 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.

2021 Conception Bay Museum Calendar Fundraiser:

The Conception Bay Museum Board of Directors is compiling a collector’s calendar for the 2021 year depicting “Historic Harbour Grace.” It is a fundraising project to help with our museum’s operational costs.

If you own or have the rights to any original photographs of Harbour Grace before 1949 (pre-Confederation) and would like to offer them for consideration to be used in our calendar, please email them before February 21, 2020. The photographs should be of buildings or events of historic value and not have recognizable people. You will be given credit for your photograph if it is used. Email your photo to: conceptionbaymuseum@outlook.com.

This showcase is dated to 1928, when it first stood in Parsons General Store on Water St, Carbonear, a shop more commonly known as Fanny’s. Alma Parsons donated this showcase to the Museum in memory of her husband and father-in-law. Today, the Museum uses this showcase to display artifacts and gift shop items.

Parsons General Store (Fanny’s). Photographer unknown.

The store was owned by Mark Parsons Sr (1884-1965) and his wife Fanny (Marshall) Parsons (1884-1970). A fisherman, Mark often mended his nets in the shop while Fanny served customers. According to the donation slip, the showcase housed “block cheese on one shelf and bologna on another,” items which Fanny carved with a large knife. The large front window on the right hand side of the shop was a great attraction for children, who would be tempted inside by the vast display of delights–Jaw Breakers, Barrel Candy, Sugar Daddies, Caravan Bars, twelve-cent cakes, and large Marshmallow Squares–on their way to and from school. The shop was perfectly located between Church Hill and Captain Frank’s Lane on the water side of Water St. Children would even make the dash to Fanny’s at recess, to get their fill of delectable sweets or a slice of bologna. For a grand total of twenty-five cents in the 1950s and ’60s, you could get a bag of Scotties Chips and a bottle of drink, with a few candy to boot.

Fanny (Marshall) Parsons, 1884-1970.

Fanny is remembered as a kind, gentle lady who operated the shop well into her 80s. Her daughter-in-law Alma Parsons (1921-2013), wife of Mark Parsons Jr, ran the shop when Fanny could no longer manage. Many happy childhood memories have been shared about Fanny, some from young men who would stop in on their way uptown on a Friday night for cigarettes, or to warm up by the potbelly stove in winter.

Fanny’s represents a bygone era of Carbonear–gone but not forgotten.

– Research and writing courtesy of Danita Power and Anne Gosse. 

Pictured: Water St, Harbour Grace, looking east, ca. 1944. Photo likely taken after the community’s third ‘Great Fire’ on August 17, 1944. W.A. Whitman’s old tailor shop, Strapp’s Pharmacy, and the old telegraph office are visible.

Photo courtesy Jane Lynch.