A Little History About Old Perlican, Newfoundland

Old Perlican is situated on the southshore of Trinty Bay, 10 km by sea from the tip of Grates's Cove Cape. It is one of the oldest fishing communities in Newfoundland, serving as the major fishing station in Trinity Bay for migratory fishermen from England in the 1600s. Its name has been the subject of some curiosity.

Dudley's map in 1647 names this town. His spelling was PERNICAN. In earlier maps (1597) the name is spelled as PARLICAN or PURLIKAN (the oldest recorded feature in Trinity Bay). In 1677 Admiral Sir John Berry referred to it as OULD PARLEGAN with the ``old'' being added sometime before 1689 to distinguish it from New Perlican qv further up the Bay. The name is presumed to come from ``pelican''. The bird is not native to Newfoundland, but the name was often given to English ships (the vessel in which Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe, for instance, was the Pelican before being renamed Golden Hind). We do not know for sure when the first settlers arrived in our community. In the 1600s Old Perlican was the largest station in Trinity Bay, chosen by Poole merchants because of its proximity to prime headland fishing grounds. It had a summer population of about 200 people in 1677, at which time there were 16 dwellings which presumably housed a small year-round population as well. The statistical report of people living in Old Perlican is given by Admiral Sir John Berry in his report in 1675. This report shows that there were eleven planters in Old Perlican then, two of whom where married. These planters had 124 men servants. In 1677 the number of planters had risen to 13. There were nine wives and 17 children and 167 men servants. According to the census taken by Admiral Sir John Berry in 1675, the earliest recored planters in Old Perlican were as follows:

1. John Biddlecome, 2. Hugh Burt, 3. John Carter (or Garter -- who had the largest establishment, employing 22 servants), 4. John Corbon

5. John Elliot, 6. John Graize, 7. William Green, 8. John Spikernell

9. Richard Swain, 10. Thomas Taylor, 11. John Witchman

Of these Burt and Green were common family names of the community in 1992.

"The Old Perlican Warn Ledger" records more surnames of our early residents. This ledger was kept for the years 1749 to 1759 for the accounts of William Warn. From the nature of its contents it appears William Warn was a big planter-fisherman or a fishing supply merchant. The ledger is the oldest exsisting account book of any business record in Newfoundland. Some names in Warn's account book were Burt, Barrett, Button, Bryant, Sparkes, and Harris. It notes that Uriah Mitchell Bursey came to Old Perlican in 1748 and John Tilley came in 1758.

In 1697 Pierre *Le Moyne D'Iberville qv judged Old Perlican to be of sufficient importance as to attack and raze it. Old Perlican is not easily defensible, the harbour being broad and open, and it would seem that D'Iberville's attack, and continued fear of French attack through the early 1700s, led the Poole merchants to relocate their major premises to Trinity, 45 km across the Bay. Old Perlican became a fishing outpost of Trinity in the early 1700s, but access to lucrative fishing grounds encouraged at least some fishermen to settle year-round.

In 1729 Old Perlican was one of 11 harbours in Newfoundland to warrant the appointment of a Justice of the Peace. By 1763, when the community had a winter population of 429 and a summer population of 738, families such as the Barretts, Burseys, Buttons, Cramms, Hopkinses, Pikes, Tilleys and Woodlands were established. Of the 429 approximately half were Irish Catholics, but subsequently many Catholic families left the community for Daniel's Cove and Grates Cove qqv, to the north. Doubtless others were among the converts made by teacher and lay preacher John Hoskins qv, who arrived in the community in 1774 and led a great Methodist revival in 1778 and 1779, making converts of virtually the entire community.

In the early 1800s the population of Old Perlican would appear to have increased rapidly, for while it did not harbour the commerce of some of the other early ``fishing capitals'' its location for the inshore fishery was ideal. There were 572 people by the first Census in 1836, 792 in 1857 and 920 in 1874. Further up Trinity Bay many communities were pioneered by Old Perlican people, who, in the absence of forests, ranged far afield for timber for fuel and boat building. Many of these later settled elsewhere, supplied in the move up the Bay by Stephen March qv, one of the most important local merchants from the 1840s.

Other services at Old Perlican, which also served much of the south side of the Bay, included those of a magistrate, a doctor and a blacksmith. The first local blacksmith would appear to have been Joseph Boyd qv, whose business was taken over by the Coombs family when he entered politics in 1882. Boyd had previously tried to improve the harbour by having a breakwater constructed between the mainland on the north side (since known as Breakwater Point) and Perlican Island. The structure did not prove equal to the force of the seas and Old Perlican remained inhospitable to larger vessels. Nonetheless, in addition to the general businesses owned by March and Boyd, Uriah Bursey, Benjamin Barrett and Joshua Burt were soon established as merchants. The Rodgers and Strong families also owned schooners trading ``up the bay'' and were involved in the Labrador fishery as skippers, as were others such as the Barretts and Cramms.

By the turn of the century the largest local merchant was Eleazer March, later bought out by his clerk, George Howell. By the 1930s the firm of George Hopkins was the largest. Like those of earlier firms Hopkins' premises were located on the south side of the harbour, where ``the Cliff'' (later known as Hopkins' Cliff) was the best deep water anchorage before harbour improvements in the 1960s and 1970s. Old Perlican was connected to the Grates Cove branch railway from 1913 to the mid-1930s. This railway followed the old ``Workington Railway'', a tramway which had at the turn of the century connected the Workington Mine at Lower Island Cove to its shipping port at the Cliff. The collapse of the Labrador fishery in the early 1900s, coupled with a succession of bad years in the inshore fishery, saw the community experience decline from 1920s.

While services for the area continued to be based there (as in 1936, when the first cottage hospital was built at Old Perlican) the decline was one which affected the area as a whole. One of Newfoundland's first fresh fish plants was opened there in 1943 by Captain Thomas Strong, but the plant did not survive long after the end of the War and subsequently much of the catch was trucked to a plant at Harbour Grace. The opening of Ocean Harvesters fresh-frozen fish plant in the 1960s had the effect of making the community once more an important fishing centre but, with improved transportation overland, this was not reflected in a dramatic increase in population. Improvements to the harbour benefited fishermen from other communities as much as those of Old Perlican and by the 1980s the fish plant, operated by Quinlan Brothers Ltd. of Bay de Verde, provided a major source of employment for the surrounding area as well. An integrated central high school, John Hoskins Memorial, has served Old Perlican and area since 1956.