Interview #16

Name: Sam Kearley

Sex: Male

Age: 76

Place and date of birth: Head Bay d'Espoir, October 9, 1922

Education: Grade three

Religion: Anglican

Occupation: Labourer

Number of children: 5

Names of children and where they live:

Eric - Morrisville

Betty - Head Bay

Sam Jr. - Head Bay

Joan - Conne River

Levision- Milltown

Phone: 882-2125

Date of interview: February 9, 1999

Place of interview: Milltown

Interviewers: Dale Willcott and Kerri-Ann Snook

Sam Kearley is the son of Samual and Alice Kearley. Sam was born October 9, 1922 in Head of Bay d'Espoir. He had four brothers and two sisters. Sam's mother, Alice Kearley, was from Hermitage and his father is from Head of Bay d'Espoir.

When Sam was a little boy, he would play football and go skating in the winter time. His mother made clothes on an old fashion sewing machine. His underwear was made of wool. He and his father would catch rabbits for food. Grade three was the highest education that Sam Kearley ever accomplished until he went to night school in Barnes. Some of his teachers were John Spencer and Miss Frances who were from Hermitage. Sam said "They were not bad at teaching and not bad to the kids."

He worked in the woods ever since he was twelve years old and worked until he retired at sixty. He started at Robert's Mill when he was fourteen and stayed there until he was eighteen. He remembered working for "peas and beans." Sam worked for Bowaters for a couple of years. When Bowaters left the bay Sam went to Glenwood to work for Bowaters. He got salt beef and corn beef to eat.

In 1941 Sam volunteered to go overseas. He was there from 1941 to 1946. Sam went on a boat called The Mandosa. The boat could hold 13000 passengers but only seventy-six hundred went on the trip. Breakfast was at seven o'clock, and supper was at five o'clock.

Eighty-four men from around the bay went overseas to the war. In 1939, there were nineteen men who went overseas. Sam recalled a long trip to North Sidney. It took them seventeen days and a total of thirty-four days to get to Scotland. Sam left in June of 1941 and returned on the fourth of May 1946. The men received $2.00 per day at the beginning and later received $2.40 per day. The men stayed in camps, there were a cook house, a canteen, and a recreation area. There was plenty of food to eat, it was like the food you got at home, for example: sausages, milk, vegetables, and salt beef. Sam worked in a sawmill for ten months. He cut pulp wood. He said the ground was better for cutting wood and timber. If you had a day off you would probably go to town by bus, which was thirty miles away. The navy was looking for men and the forestry crowd was the first ones to go. Sam was one of the men to go into the navy. Sixty nine-hundred men came back from overseas in 1946. Sam owned a car for eight months and sold it before he came back to Newfoundland. He also drove a tractor over there.

Some midwives' Sam can remember was Fanny Barnes. She was the first one in Head of Bay d'Espoir. She helped born him. He recalled Millie Willmott being a midwife and she never lost a baby just like aunt Eva Collier in St. Albans. In Conne River, there was Millie Joe, and Sam thinks the first midwife in Conne River was Harriett Joe.

Sam can remember cases of T.B., consumption, and rheumatism. Dr. Parsons was a doctor in Hermitage, but many people would use home remedies such as the following: for a cut they would use turpentine, for a cold you would melt butter and put it in some water to take out the salt. They would add a little bit of pepper in and rub it on your chest. For a headache, you would put a brown paper which was dipped in vinegar and then put it on your forehead. For boils, you would cut the head of the boil and put soap and molasses on the boil. For rising fingers you would use a bread poultice.

The coastal boat would come in and everyone would buy whatever they needed. The coastal boat did not come in when the ice was frozen. People called March a long, cold, and a hungry month, because their supplies would start running out about the first of March. They bought sugar for three cents a pound, potted meat for five cents, cans of pineapple chunks 2/25 cent. Some people went through three sacks of flour a month. Mail also came in by the coastal boats.

At Christmas time, people would kill hens, sheep, and roosters for Christmas dinner and raisin pudding. They would go mummering and have dances. If somebody wanted to go to St. Alban's, they would use the tail-race road, go up the brook and go across to Buses Cove, at Rocks point.

The best thing that happened to Bay d'Espoir according to Sam Kearley, was Bowaters and Hydro. He can remember there being a lot of work at first. "Then you had to do everything by hand. Today there is machinery to do the work for you. Back then you could go in the woods and cut wood for nothing and today you got to pay for a permit. Hydro put the road in boggy in 1964, but there were roads in the bay before that (1956-11957) because when Jack Macdonald's boy was scald they had a road through then." Sam said.

Sam recalled Gord Strickland having the first car, Marg Marshall had the first truck in the area, and the Robert's brothers had the first store in Milltown. Reverend Holland was the first minister. Sam thinks his father had the first TV. in Head of Bay d'Espoir, they got their stations from Marystown. He got his first power saw in 1958. He made his first trip to St. Alban's in 1958. His wife, Ivy, can remember the name of their first stove, "comfort," first the stoves were wood, then they were oil. Ivy and Sam recalled the name of the first range they had was an "Elcrease." The first table that Ivy and Sam bought was in 1948. They had to pay duty on the table from Eatons. Sam drove one of the first tractors in the bay. The first moose he ever shot was up above the power house in 1949. Moose was scarce until the 1940's or 1950's. The first warden he could remember was Phil Willcott. Labour Day he would go to St. Alban's. He remembered Sammy D. Collier having a phone, and if anyone wanted to get a plane from Gander or make a long distance call. George Perry had the first radio. Sam said all the men helped to dig ditches for water and sewer. Eric Kendall was the first person on the track and a good hand.

They had their own bunks when they went overseas. They had twelve to a bunk. He can remember having to bring water from Morrisville.

Interview #16

Name: Ivy Kearley

Sex: Female

Age:

Place and date of birth: Morrisville

Education: Grade eight

Religion: Anglican

Occupation: Homemaker

Number of children: 5

Names of children and where they live:

Eric Morrisville

Betty Head Bay

Sam Jr. Head Bay

Joan Conne River

Levision Milltown

Phone: 882-2125

Date of interview: February 9, 1999

Place of interview: Milltown

Interviewers: Dale Willcott and Kerri-Ann Snook

Ivy grew up in a family with ten children. Ivy was the first one to be christened in the old Morrisville church. She made it to grade eight in school. Before school would start in the mornings, she would go in woods and check her snares that she had sat-up. She was only thirteen years old when she came out of school. John Spencer was one of her teachers in school.

She remembered one of her sisters got burned. Her sister had to go to Hermitage to see a doctor. It took three days to get to Hermitage. "People said my sister would not live three days, but she is in Morrisville now and she is seventy four." Ivy said. They had to row by punts to get to Hermitage. She remembered Dr. Parsons working in Hermitage.

She recalled having to cut down barrels to use as a scrub-bucket. She would use a scrub board to wash her clothes. She would put the scrub-board in the scrub-bucket and wash their clothes that way. Ivy would put sawdust on the floors to keep them clean. Her underskirts were made of wool by her mother. She remembered taking three or four beef buckets, putting them together and putting wood on top of the buckets to make a slide. The teacher would take so many at a time to go sliding. Her only transportation was walking, horses, oxen, or dog in the winter. If people died in Milltown or Morrisville, they would bury them in Head of Bay d'Espoir cemetery. When the war was on, they had to ration their butter and sugar.

Ivy worked a serving girl in Milltown and earned $13.00 a month. She worked in 1945 for $5.00 a month for the Strickland Brothers as a cook for them. She said "Morrisville was known as Lynch Cove because a man and his two sons got drowned there, which 's why people call it Lynch Cove, at least that is what I grew up with."

Ivy's daughter, Joan Kearley, had an appendix attack one time and she had to go to St. Alban's to use the phone at Sammy D. Collier's store. They called a plane to take her to St. John's to have it removed. Ivy could not go with her daughter because there was no room on the plane, They were three other people going, because they were also sick. Ivy went after a few days by plane. "Poor Joan never had anyone in with her that night she had her appendix out." Ivy said.