IT HAS BEEN SOME time since C. Grant Head dispensed with the myth of the illegality of settlement as an explanation for the scattered pattern of population distribution in Newfoundland, and replaced it with the argument that families settled along the coast in pursuit of cod, salmon and seals.[2] Not that he was the first to make that observation. In 1827 the clergyman George Coster noted that the main cause of mobility along the coast was an expanding population that gradually filled new harbours and coves in the pursuit of new fishing rooms.[3] Patricia Thornton also emphasized that it was economics, the mercantile organization of trade to exploit these resources, that was the main determinant in this frontier settlement.[4] In his study of English settlement in Newfoundland, Gordon Handcock skillfully integrated these insights into the concept of population expansion driven by resource exploitation and mercantile regional centres.[5]

However, geographic distribution of resources and economic organization do not completely explain settlement in Newfoundland. As a case in point, the inhabitants who founded Harbour Buffett in Placentia Bay resettled there with more than fish on their minds. They gathered in Harbour Buffett to form a centre for religion and education, which would not have been possible if they had remained in the numerous harbours and coves close to the fishing grounds. They did not ignore proximity to fishing grounds and to merchants, but used both to pursue their goal of coming together to build a church and a school. Fishing near home and near Cape St. Mary=s, they enlisted St. John=s merchants, the Church of England, the Newfoundland School Society (NSS), the newly created House of Assembly, and Methodists to the cause of education and religion in the settlement. Thomas Edwards Collett, Thomas Bendle, William Jeynes, and John Haddon were important leaders in the evangelical nature of education and religion and thus shaped Harbour Buffett.[6] Their agenda developed with general harmony until the arrival in 1844 of the Tractarian bishop, Edward Feild.[7] Tractarianism came to Harbour Buffett and to inner Placentia Bay in full force with the arrival of the clergyman, William Kepple White. Feild appointed White to the Harbour Buffett mission of the Church of England in 1847, a little over a decade after the beginning of the settlement, ushering in a new phase in people=s lives.

Those who resettled to Harbour Buffett came to the island intending to form a community which would enable them to make progress in religion and education, two areas of life that they valued highly. W.F. Meek, writing in 1859 when the community was not 30 years old, commented that, “the formation is owing chiefly to the late Arch-deacon Wix who, when traveling on foot through the country during the winter, visited the isolated families about the shores of the bay, and persuaded them to select some commodious harbour where a number of families might be located, and there to build a church and a school.”[8] The idea of resettling themselves must have already been in people=s minds, because Wix went around the bay in February/March, 1835. When the Methodist missionary from Burin visited Harbour Buffett in the fall of 1836 he found the place “fast increasing in population,”and the people intending to build “a house to answer the double purpose of a place of worship and school.”[9]

Many of these residents did not come directly to Harbour Buffett from England, but migrated to Harbour Buffett from the islands on the western shore, from the eastern shore of inner Placentia Bay and from the Burin area.[10] The settlers were Protestant English migrants who arrived in Newfoundland in the early 19th century. Headstones in Harbour Buffett show that Thomas Bendle came from Hampshire, and that Thomas Hann came from Montacute, Somersetshire. Thomas E. Collett came from Bromsgrove, Worcestershire.[11] John Hollett, who was married in Harbour Buffett in 1840, came from Beaminster, Dorset.[12] Charles Shave, James Dicks, John Dicks, a family named Curtis, Nelson Burton, George Burton, and Moses Burton were also of English descent.[13] Some of the Harbour Buffett residents may have “come out” with the Spurrier & Co. to Burin, Oderin, Isle Valen, and Barren Island before that large English firm went bankrupt in 1830.[14] The small merchants and traders in inner Placentia Bay may have become the new employers of those who were dislocated. For instance, James Butler & Co. of Harbour Buffett hired fishermen to catch cod, herring, mackerel and salmon, had a cooper shop and had two schooners to freight the fish “to St. John’s and bring back supplies.”[15]

A key figure in the success of Harbour Buffett, John Haddon, reported that the settlers formed a “Harbour Beaufette Society” under the leadership of Thomas Edwards Collett to bring the aims of worship and education to reality.[16] This is at odds with the account of William Kepple White, a clergyman who came later, who stated that Alexander Chambers and James Butler “were the first to move the good cause of Education and Religion here ... in or about 1837,” and he had “the documents and accounts” to proveit.[17] Infact,allthreeprovidedleadership.WhileonLongIsland,butbeforehehad moved to Harbour Buffett, Collett wrote to Archdeacon Wix in May, 1836 asking whether he could help “in any way” toward building “a small Church in that Harbor.” He said that Butler had consulted the people and had found that they were very eager to help.CollettsaidthathewassendinghisletterbyMr.Chamberswho“hopefullyagrees with us, and has kindly promised to see you upon the subject.” He thanked him for the books and said he was able to start a “small loan library on the island.”[18]

Haddon reported that the first act of the Harbour Beaufette Society in 1836 was “to clear and fence a choice piece of land, to be set apart for sacred purposes, their next was to erect a house for a schoolroom and place for holding divine service.”[19] In that year the Board of Education in Placentia received “a communication from Mr. T.E. Collett, at Harbour Bouffet,” which said that, “at a meeting of the inhabitants of that place it was determined to erect a School House there.”[20] Education in Newfoundland received a significant impetus in 1836. The Education Act of that year provided ,2100 annually for five years for education, and of that amount, ,200 was allotted to Placentia and St. Mary=s District and ,100 to the District of Burin. Boards of Education were set up in each electoral district and they included, “the senior or superior Clergyman of each of the several Religious Denominations, being actually resident within the District.”[21] The Commissioners of the Placentia and St. Mary’s Board attempted to serve some of the islands in Placentia Bay right away, giving education grants to Red Island and Harbour Buffett. That included ,10 going to T.E. Collett to be the schoolmaster at Harbour Buffett. They resolved to give education grants to Sound Island, Burgeo, and Barren Island but cancelled them when teachers could not be found. The Board regretted it did not have the means to fund teachers for Woody Island, Isle Valen, Burgeo, Merasheen, Presque, and Paradise.[22]

Building a school took, “more than common exertions and some self-denial” on the part of the new settlers since they were few in number and were in the midst of building their own houses.[23] This was an enormous task. Victor Butler gave a rare detailed ground-level description of the task these first settlers had in order to make dwelling places for themselves:

First, settlers had to select a suitable place with water nearby. A place in the woods had to be cleared to build a house with the thought in mind that a piece of land could also be cleared for a vegetable patch. As the house to be built would be built with a straight round timber approximately four inches in diameter, while clearing the land all suitable timber would be put by for building, the remainder for firewood. The size house would be determined by the number of members in a family. The largest would be fourteen by twenty feet, the smallest twelve feet by sixteen. Four straight logs would be laid in place as level as possible on wood shores or posts in the ground. Those logs would be notched together in each corner. The tools at those people’s disposal would be one or two axes, a hand saw, a hand augur, and some settlers owned pit saws approximately 7 feet long used by the men and probably an adze. As nails were not available all fastenings would be with trenails or wooden pegs driven through holes drilled by hand with an auger. The walls would be round sticks or studs, 6 feet long, placed vertically side by side fastened to the foundation logs. Another log would be placed at the top end of the studs named the wallplate, also fastened with a trenail. When all the walls were erected leaving an open space for the door, rinds would be taken from large straight trees and spread flat out to dry in the sun. The women would be busy picking moss and drying in the sun. The moss would be used to chink the vacancies between the studs to stop the draught and snow from blowing in. The roof would be peaked or on a sort of mansard style so as to form a sort of attic. The boys of the family usually slept in this attic. The roof would be formed with a ridge pole with straight sticks laid on the rafters. The rinds I mentioned would be laid on the rafters with the ridges overlapping. Straight poles would be laid on the rinds and all fastened down with witrods twisted together to form a sort of small rope .... Without the outside of the house being finished, the work of the interior would be taken care of. As stoves were out of the question, an open fireplace would have to be built. There were only certain places in the bay where suitable stone could be obtained. The principal place was on the east side of the bay, a place named Grebe’s Nest. Using a metal wedge and hammer one could cleave out slabs any desired thickness. Using those slabs to build the fireplace and with a hole out through the roof lined with slabs for the chimney perfectly fireproof.... The only light in those houses was a square hole cut in one wall, ten by twelve inches for light.... The house being finished, every available hour would be spent clearing land for growing vegetables and for meadow land as more than half the food had to be grown and sheep had to be raised. More than half those settlers’ clothing would be knit from yarn spun from sheep’s wool.[24]

Still, while clearing land and building their own houses and wharfs and stages, they built a school, which in 1839 had 27 students.[25] As with the church building, started in 1840, in order to build the school they had to “bring out the frame from the woods.”[26] Moreover, they could not rely much on Wix. He fled the colony altogether in the fall of 1838, “most unexpectedly and secretly,” absconding with his reputation in tatters amid accusations of indebtedness and hiring a prostitute.[27]

Yet the people were not entirely on their own. According to Haddon, they were “assisted by some friends in St. John’s.”[28] Collett told the Education Board at Placentia they were “in possession of some funds they had contracted” to build the school which they hoped to have finished by May 1837.[29] William Kepple White stated that, “Alexander Chambers went to St. John’s and collected” money from John Sinclair, C.F. Bennett & Co., and Rennie Stewart & Co.[30] Apart from the disagreement over their respective roles, therefore, the record shows that there were at least three leaders furthering the cause of education and religion in Harbour Buffett in 1836 by making contacts with the Board of Education in Placentia and with merchants and friends in St. John’s. Chambers did not live in Harbour Buffett, but in Burgeo (Chamber’s Island), about halfway between Bar Haven and Isle Valen in Placentia Bay. He was likely the brother or father of the C.D. Chambers who set up a business in Harbour Buffett, probably in the 1830s.[31] It is strange that William Thomas, the treasurer, is not mentioned by Kepple White.[32] Collett had connections in St. John’s, and he may have known Thomas, an evangelical Anglican who donated ,200 to Spencer’s Cathedral.[33]

It was natural that the St. John’s firms that had agents in inner Placentia Bay, or that were suppliers to the fishery, should be called on to contribute to the building of churches in the area. A separate church building, begun in 1840, had a boost from outside the community, unlike the combined school and church structure of 1837. However it was not a large impetus. A piece of land had already been set aside by the people for that purpose. William Jeynes, the first missionary, called a meeting where a committee was formed to go into the woods to procure timber for a frame within the month.[34] Subscriptions were taken to the amount of ,78.[35]

When Bishop Spencer arrived in Harbour Buffett in 1843 he found the 200 person church and parsonage “well planned.” The residents were, “apparently very devout, consistent and attached to their minister.” He consecrated the church and cemetery and confirmed 69 people. He was amazed at the rapid growth of the place: “I scrambled to the highest hill within reach to get a correct knowledge of the localities of the settlement in which eight years ago there were not a single inhabitant. The present population is upward of 230.” He departed amid “grateful expressions,” and, “the whole congregation accompanied me to the boat.”[36] Afterwards, 19 individuals signed a memorial thanking Bishop Spencer for his visit to their “long neglected” community and bay. More would have signed, but they were on distant fishing grounds. They appreciated his “liberal pecuniary assistance” in erecting churches in the bay, and in providing a missionary in an area where the oldest people could recall “only two or three visits by ministers of our Church.” They thanked him for their new church, his kindness in granting them “a resident minister,” beautiful Church books, and assistance with their parsonage. They were particularly appreciative that they had an opportunity “to ratify and confirm in our own persons the vows made in our name at our baptism.”[37] Much progress had been made since Jeynes had found them “old and young ... with much apparent earnestness reading or learning to recall the word of God.”[38]

The people who resettled in Harbour Buffett were able to migrate to follow their religious and educational aspirations because of two economic factors — the availability of merchants and places to fish. Merchants such as Chambers and Thomas Hann moved with the settlers.[39] James Butler & Co. also employed servants there in 1837. Butler hired fishermen to catch cod, herring, mackerel and salmon, had a cooper shop and had two schooners to freight the fish “to St. John’s and bring back supplies.”[40] In addition to access to merchant credit and trade, the population was not dependent on fishing in the immediate area. “The distant fishing grounds” mentioned by Bishop Spencer likely referred to Cape St. Mary’s. Later, in speaking of a devout fisherman drowned at the Cape, the clergyman Frederick Meek mentioned that it was the custom for “large numbers of the fishermen” in the harbour to depart in June and July for the fishery there.[41] Such fishermen could congregate in Harbour Buffett since they were not dependent on the fishing ground nearby, similar to Labrador fishermen and sealers who could gather together in settlements in Conception Bay.

In 1843, the Protestants of Harbour Buffett, both Church of England and Methodist, were a relatively united and peaceful people.[42] Harbour Buffett appeared in the Methodist records for the first time in 1837, when a Mr. Butler, probably James, subscribed 10 shillings.[43] In 1838 a Methodist class was formed there, with Thomas Bendle presumably as class leader, since his name was first on the list. Thomas Hann, a small merchant, was also a member. The class continued in the records until 1844, with Collett becoming a member in 1839. James Butler was a subscriber for some time, but appears not to have been a member.[44] By 1840 there were seven to eight members at Sound Island, Woody Island and Harbour Buffett, but Sound Island had the most subscribers by far at 15. In 1844 Spencer’s Cove on Long Island was noted for the first time with four subscribers.[45]

It has to be asked how “Methodist” were the people denoted as “subscribers” and “members”? William Kepple White, the local Church of England clergyman, later charged that Collett and others were dissenters and some of them had even “received the sacrament at the hands of a Wesleyan Minister.”[46] It appears that subscribers were sympathetic to Methodism. They paid the preacher on his annual visit around the bay, possibly attended his meeting, and received such services as marriage, and baptism for their children. Even C.F. Bennett, an ardent member of the Church of England, had a Methodist subscriber at Isle Valen.[47] Membership in the local Methodist Society denoted much more commitment. The historian Naboth Winsor called the societies “the heart and strength of the Methodist movement.”[48] But one has to ask: how distinct from the Church of England did members of such societies regard themselves? Did many see themselves as a movement within the Church of England? Glen Lucas, Archivist-Historian of the United Church of Canada, concluded that, “the ambivalent relationship between Wesleyan Methodism and Anglicanism found in England in the early 19th century continued in Newfoundland until the episcopate of Bishop Feild.”[49] Five of the inhabitants of Harbour Buffett continued membership in the Methodist Society until at least 1844, yet it appears they did not see any conflict with being members of the Church of England.[50] Two members of the Methodist Society, Thomas Bendle and Thomas Hann, also signed the memorial thanking Bishop Spencer for the spiritual benefits he brought to Harbour Buffett. In 1842 “Mr. Collett” was also a member of the Methodist Society and his is the first name on the memorial.[51] Yet there is no record of any question being raised whether the church would be Church of England or “common to Missionaries.” This was the case at Oderin where, “Wesleyans had paid some times two visits a year.”[52] Instead, they likely saw the Methodist support as an encouragement in their evangelical Anglicanism.

According to Spencer, many people of Harbour Buffett in 1843 were “apparently very devout.” His visit in the middle of July was at the height of the caplin scull. J.G. Mountain described that time of the fishery well:

At this season the poor fellows are literally at work day and night. They do not come in till dark, the task of splitting and salting the fish then occupies several hours, and before dawn they are off again to the fishing ground. I have known men not take off their clothes for a week together, or get more than a snatch of an hour’s broke sleep with their clothes and boots on for the whole time.[53]

Yet after a day that may have started at 2 a.m. to be followed by another, the fishermen still attended the Church at 9 p.m. after they had salted away the last fish and washed up for the occasion. But this was a kind of culmination, a celebration, and they did not want to miss it. They had begun to construct their church building in the fall of 1840. Jeynes had held classes for confirmation for which there were “a goodly number” even back in 1840.[54] In 1842 the church was “sufficiently forward to be used” and a colleague of Mr. Jeynes judged that the future looked quite good for the mission.[55] In 1843 the time had arrived. The bishop came. Sunday morning, 16 July was possibly the high point of the three days. As Spencer recorded in his journal, “a lovely summer morning brought the whole Protestant population with the exception of few persons in the distant fisheries to the Church.” Bishop Spencer preached, confirmed 23 people, and celebrated the Lord’s Supper with “25 very serious and devout members.”[56]

The following year was momentous. John Haddon came to Harbour Buffett as a teacher for the Newfoundland School Society (NSS), bolstering the evangelical nature of the community. Bishop Feild also came to Newfoundland. Feild was soon to move the Church of England in a direction that would bring him into conflict with the kind of worship community the people of Harbour Buffett had been building. Haddon had been educated at the NSS’s “principal school” in St. John’s.[57] Before he came to Harbour Buffett he was a teacher for the Society at Rock Harbour, near Burin. Spencer visited his school there and was impressed with the “exemplary young man,” mentioning that Haddon also read prayers every Sunday in the settlement.[58] Haddon taught in Harbour Buffett for five years and for two of them, between the ministries of Jeynes and White (1845-1847) was “left in charge of the church.”[59] White said that when he came, he found Haddon “in possession of the parsonage and Glebe.”[60] This meant that Haddon had enormous influence in the community, since as a teacher he was present in the community even more than a clergyman. The latter was there in the winter, but visited the other communities in the Mission from May to November.[61] Haddon not only “read prayers” but conscientiously taught Sunday School to 60 children. He taught them from an evangelical perspective and did not appear to make any distinction in teaching Christianity during the week or on Sunday. He gave a revealing account into both the frame of mind of the students and his own emphasis in teaching religion:

They had been taught what they knew by the exercise of the memory without the judgement, which system of education was productive of much evil. They would say their prayers with very little reverence, and no meaning whatever, having a superstitious notion of merit being attached to a form of words called a prayer. They would repeat their catechism and other lessons (always said perfectly) without gathering one fresh idea from them; and afterward, when some had learned to read, your teacher found they would go through any of the most interesting narrative parts of the Bible, or the simplest of our Lord’s parables, without discovering the least pleasure in what they read, and on examination it would be found without the judgement being at all exercised. As to religious truths, he believes they had given them up as incomprehensible, for he never could get a sensible answer to a question on that subject; and when he attempted to explain any portion of Scripture, instead of trying to understand him, they would sink into a kind of apathy and answer yes or no with seeming indifference. At the Sunday-school, your teacher ... has examined them all separately and carefully to find out the extent of their Christian knowledge; he has ascertained that in all, their knowledge of religion was confused, and of scripture history that it was unconnected; not one could tell me how a sinner may become just before God.... It is now four years since he arrived here.... In the Sunday-school, out of 60 that attend 53 can read in the Testament well, and tell the benefits of Christ’s death.[62]

Haddon was not interested in mere rote learning, but wanted the exercise of “the judgement.” This emphasis, combined with his emphasis on Scripture, showed there was a noticeable lack of stress on the Prayer Book and liturgy. The centre of both the content of the religious teaching and the exercise of the judgement was the evangelical focus on, “how a sinner may become just before God,” and, “the benefits of Christ’s death.” He not only stressed the necessity of conversion at school, but also was eager to hear from parents at home whether the children exhibited any evidences of being “in a state of grace.”[63] Haddon had freedom to reinforce an evangelical understanding of Christianity at Harbour Buffett, in school, at home, and weekly at church for two full years. This he did with much zeal and ability. He was, therefore, a major factor in the strengthening of the Protestant evangelicalism which White met head on upon his arrival in Harbour Buffett in 1847.

We can ask whether Haddon was a Methodist in Church of England clothing. We know that his father William Haddon, who came to Newfoundland as “Clerk of Works” to superintend the building of Government House, led the Methodist choir in St. John’s at this time.[64] While in Rock Harbour, Haddon contributed to the Methodist Society and continued to do so while in Harbour Buffett.[65] After moving to Bonavista in 1849, a contemporary called him a dissenter.[66] Speaking of his brother William in 1854 who had moved to the Independent Chapel in St. John’s, Haddon said, “What a shame for him to forsake the old Methodist Chapel where he was Christianized.”[67] John became a teacher at the Wesleyan Training School at St. John’s in 1855, but later taught at the Church of England Academy.[68] H.W. Hoyles and Bishop Feild both protested against his being appointed Inspector of Schools in 1861 because he was a Wesleyan.[69] It may be that John Haddon was open to evangelical Anglicanism but was driven back to Methodism because of White’s attitude toward dissenters. Maybe, like “Omega” who wrote to the Public Ledger from Harbour Buffett in 1851 after Bishop Feild’s visit, Haddon saw himself as one of those whose “duty” it was, “to abandon the church in this place and seek ... that section of the universal church of Christ ... whose doctrine is pure, and whose ministers, though they may not boast of apostolic succession may eminently possess the apostolic spirit.”[70]

It is possible that Haddon was comfortable as either an evangelical Anglican or as a Methodist; there had been a history of mutual respect, communication and fellowship among the evangelicals in St. John’s.[71] The Wesleyans greeted Bishop Spencer on his arrival, and he replied that though the Church of England differed from them “in some particulars,” they were both “conscientiously engaged in promoting the great and vital truths of Christianity.”[72] They preached and shared in fellowship in each other’s churches. For example, the Congregationalist D.D. Evans preached at the Wesleyan Chapel.[73] St. Andrews presented a copy of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress to William Faulkner, the Wesleyan minister, upon his departure.[74] The Presbyterians and Wesleyans showed up to support the Congregationalists at the laying of the cornerstone for their new chapel.[75] They worked together in the Congregationalist London Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Missionary Society and the Anglican Newfoundland School Society.[76] They also cooperated in the Bible Society. The Anglican, William Thomas, was its president. Another Anglican, Robert Prowse, was on the Bible Society Committee with the Congregationalist, Joseph Noad, and the Presbyterian, James Seaton. They assisted Methodist missionaries such as John Peach at Burin and Elias Brettle in Fortune Bay.[77] Their attitude was probably best described in the monthly magazine, The Newfoundland Guardian, which Joseph Woods began to edit in 1851. In the first issue he stated “that there is but one centre of unity — the Lord Jesus Christ — that all the sects of the Protestant Church differ only in ceremonial details, and that they agree in all that is vital, permanent and precious.”[78]

When Haddon first arrived in Harbour Buffett, there were evangelical forces already present in the community. Between 1835 and 1839, Thomas and Bridget Bendle who were pillars of the evangelical Methodist Society, arrived in Harbour Buffett from nearby Haystack. In 1829, William Wilson, the Methodist missionary, wrote that the Bendles and the Bugdens of Haystack were, “four individuals [who] have been brought under a concern for their souls and are formed into a society.”[79] The records, which continue up to 1844, place them at the beginning of the list.[80] Collett, a community leader, was against, “the novel introduction of symbols and forms indicative of doctrines not Evangelical.”[81] Born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, Collett came to Newfoundland in 1815 to serve a seven year apprenticeship to James Simms as a “notary public general, ship broker, and commercial agent.”[82] Simms was a trained lawyer and merchant who came to Newfoundland in 1809 and set up businesses in St. John’s, Twillingate and elsewhere.[83] Collett was assigned to his business in Petty Harbour, where he lived until at least 1831. He signed a petition to the SPG requesting a clergyman for Petty Harbour in 1824 and subscribed to the NSS from 1828 to 1831.[84] He may have moved to Placentia Bay to make a new start. On 26 May 1826 he had been “declared insolvent” and in 1831 he was “discharged from debt.”[85] He married Anne Marshall of St. John’s in 1823, and the “Family Register” shows that he had 13 children. According to their places of birth, he moved to Long Island, Placentia Bay in 1832 or 1833. He first lived in Collett’s Cove, named after him, and moved to Harbour Buffett in 1836. However, his family remained in Collett’s Cove until 1837 where James was born on 3 April 1837.[86]

Collett began teaching in the first school in the Harbour Buffett on 1 August 1837. Haddon, his son-in-law, said that he did this for a year without pay, though the Board of Education presented him with ,10 in recognition of his “praiseworthy conduct.”[87] White, however, wrote in 1853 that “in or about 1837” James Butler and Alexander Chambers “employed this Mr. Collett” and gave him time off to fish during the caplin scull to “eke out a support.”[88] He taught school until at least Jeynes’s arrival in 1840.[89] While he was teaching, Collett also read “the morning and evening prayers ... according to the Liturgy of the Church of England,” and taught Sunday School also free of charge.[90] His branch of the Church of England held to “the pure unadulterated Gospel, as Evangelical Churchmen view it.”[91]

Collett seems to have prospered in Placentia Bay. In 1845, his father was glad to hear that he and his large family were “so well and happy.” That was a contrast to back in England where it was difficult for even “the most industrious man” to make a living because of “taxes and large payments.”[92] In Harbour Buffett he was involved in the church and the school, as we have seen. He was appointed a JP by Governor LeMarchant in 1849.[93] He was a Road Commissioner.[94] He became a Way Master in 1853 and his boat was hired to carry “special mails” from Little Placentia and St. John’s.[95] He also carried freight.[96] Haddon said that Collett had “his men” put up the studs for the teacher’s house, and, “sent three hands two days to assist in covering the roof.” He had animals for meat, a regular supply of milk and a horse named Jack.[97]

The emphasis given here to key men reflects more the difficulty in gleaning information on women from the historical record, and does not do justice to the importance of women in both the economic and the religious life of the community. If they did not give “more than 50%” both to physical labour and spiritual matters in Harbour Buffett, they gave at least that.[98] Victor Butler mentions, for instance, that, “more than half those settlers’ clothing would be knit from yarn spun from sheep’s wool.” In her portrayal of the production of woolen clothing from sheep to garment — shearing, picking, washing, carding, spinning, twisting, knitting — Hilda Chaulk Murray gives us a sense of both the amount of women’s work and the skill involved in this one aspect alone of outport living.[99] Murray also noted that women helped on a community level, “if a person were bedridden and the family could not cope.”[100] We see this happening in Harbour Buffett in 1851 when Edith Kirby was critically ill and several women, Bridget Bendle, Frances Burton, Mary Emberly, Mrs. Robert Hann, and Mary Tulk tended to her.[101] These women were also spiritually involved in the community, being sensitive to clerical religious requirements at the parish level. As evangelical Protestants, they were shocked when the local clergyman required from Edith Kirby what they considered to be auricular confession.[102] Moreover, Bridget Bendle and Mary Tulk were prepared to sign affidavits against the clergyman regarding the matter.[103] This involved considerable risk, for the clergyman was in charge of both road employment for their husbands and the feeding of their families with Indian meal. After living through a three-year period on the margin of physical existence in 1853, this was no small valuing of religion.[104] We see this same fortitude and fearlessness in the young Ann Maria Bendle. When she felt the clergyman was unjust in demanding her “to beg his pardon” in order to be permitted to go back to school, she absolutely refused. “I would not for I did not know what to beg his pardon for.” She noted that most in the community quit attending school after Haddon left and White came, probably because of the Tractarianism he represented.[105]

Another major force for evangelicalism in Harbour Buffett was the first missionary, William Jeynes. He visited in 1840, but did not set up residence there until the summer of 1841.[106] Jeynes had been a teacher with the evangelical NSS since 1825 and on the occasion of his appointment had been its superintendent.[107] He was still working in that capacity in the winter of 1841.[108] He was one of two individuals, however, adopted by the SPG as “exclusively missionaries” and thus did not teach day school in Harbour Buffett.[109] As a result, Harbour Buffett did not have a school teacher for the two and a half years before Haddon’s arrival in 1844.[110] It is not clear when Collett finished teaching, but in 1841 the School Society reported that it had “ventured to undertake” the school in Harbour Buffett “built by the people” and “offered with its premises to the Society.”[111] The same report stressed the evangelical “grand object” of the Society, which was, “the education of the youth of Newfoundland in the principles of God’s revealed truth, as received and taught by the Church of England.”[112]

As the first decade of Harbour Buffett neared its end, so too did the peace of the Methodist and Church of England’s evangelical mutualism. Bishop Feild, who entered the harbour in September of 1845, cared little for either.[113] Just after his arrival in Newfoundland he published his ideas of how to imprint Tractarian ritual and theology on the Church of England in the colony.[114] He was particularly disgusted with the religious material culture of the popular Protestantism of Harbour Buffett as demonstrated in the architecture of the church they had built. The only special furniture from St. John’s they had received for it was a pulpit, the great symbol of Protestantism, with its emphasis on preaching the Word of God.[115] Later, Bishop Feild reflected back on the Protestant era before his arrival:

Bishop Spencer had not been able to extend his visits farther to the north than Twillingate, in Notre Dame Bay ... or than Harbour Buffett, in Placentia Bay.... In these visits he consecrated nine or ten new churches, but several of them in an unfinished and unfurnished state; a circumstance which need not be regretted, as the preference for pews, and galleries, and pulpits in the center of the building, was then very strong.[116]

How strong he felt about this is shown from the alterations he made at St. Thomas’s within three months of his arrival in Newfoundland. Arriving on 4 July, he prepared for his clergy’s September visitation to the city by moving the pulpit from the centre of the church to the side so that the altar alone became the focal point. He stated that he took such immediate action in order to show his clergy “the proper arrangements of a church.”[117] He had a near revolt on his hands at the Parish church upon his return from Bermuda in the spring of 1845 because of similar changes.[118] Feild also had no tolerance for the ecumenicity of mutual respect, communication and fellowship which prevailed between Methodism and Anglicanism in Harbour Buffett. He disdained Methodist claims of being a church as “pretensions,” full of “worthlessness and presumption.”[119]

Jeynes’s departure from Harbour Buffett in 1845 may be explained in part by his new bishop’s Tractarianism. Haddon stated that he simply “went away,” White claimed that he left because of “opposition” from Collett.[120] It is likely that in 1845 Jeynes came under pressure from Feild to change his evangelical emphasis. He would have been expected to carry out the Bishop’s very specific 1844 instructions for ceremonies and the interior of the church building. For example, the pulpit would not be permitted to remain at the centre in the front of the church — its position in Harbour Buffett.[121] Did Jeynes attempt to move it? It is also likely that in the popular ecumenical Anglicanism of the community, extempore prayers were offered before the sermon. Feild declared that this practice, “arose, I imagine, in an evil time, and was adopted by perverse and self-righteous men, to introduce their own conceits and fancied improvements.”[122] Did Jeynes return from the bishop’s “visitation” to St. John’s in September, 1844, with the understanding that these orders were to be “punctually obeyed” as his bishop had dictated?[123] Jeynes would have felt the pressure keenly, since as a deacon he needed to please his bishop in order to be ordained a priest. Bishop Feild considered well the next appointment to Harbour Buffett. In 1847 he appointed William Kepple White to carry out his Tractarian program to the fullest. This caused a severe rupture in the popular religious impulse which had undergirded the founding of Harbour Buffett and had prevailed in the community during the first decade of its existence and, as we have seen, had been a principal reason for founding the community in the first place.[124]

Historians and geographers have rightly emphasized access to resources when examining its pattern of settlement, but it was a religious impulse which provided the impetus for the founding and growth of Harbour Buffett. People migrated there from other parts of Placentia Bay and from Burin to carry out their vision, but with a careful eye to the fishery and its mercantile organization. The community also benefitted from population mobility and from expanding government support for education in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Its harbour provided an attractive location to people scattered in various coves who desired to resettle to a central location where they could build a church and a school. Motivated by this goal they assiduously applied themselves to create a community of worship, even while they, as new settlers, were engaged in the labour-intensive task of building their own houses, wharves and stages. Currents within 19th century Christianity affected the settlers as much as did currents in the sea or the price of fish in the markets of Europe. The resettlement in Harbour Buffett occurred just before the Church of England began expanding into Placentia Bay under the evangelical Bishop Spencer. The community thus had an evangelical emphasis from its beginning, for like other Protestant settlements in the bay, it had been served by Methodist ministers from Burin. It compared to Haystack and Woody Island in having a core of Methodist sympathizers, though it did not tend so far in that direction as Sound Island. Beginning in 1837 with the services of NSS schoolteachers, lay readers and Sunday School teachers Thomas Edwards Collett and later John Haddon, a robust, indigenous evangelical Anglicanism developed that became important in building the community. It was cultivated in day school and Sunday school, preached in church, and reinforced by such people as the Bendles. With no clergy for two years, Harbour Buffett had a flourishing evangelical Anglicanism by the time of White’s arrival in 1847. This vibrant populist faith then proved a stumbling block to him and to his bishop, Edward Feild.