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Cuper's Cove, on the southwest shore of Conception Bay on
Newfoundland Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region of Labrador, having a total size of . As of 2025 the population ...
's Avalon Peninsula was an early English settlement in the
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, and the third one after Harbour Grace, Newfoundland (1583) and
Jamestown, Virginia The Jamestown settlement in the Colony of Virginia was the first permanent British colonization of the Americas, English settlement in the Americas. It was located on the northeast bank of the James River, about southwest of present-day Willia ...
(1607) to endure for longer than a year. It was established in 1610 by John Guy on behalf of Bristol's Society of Merchant Venturers, who had been given a charter by King
James I of England James VI and I (James Charles Stuart; 19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 March 1603 unti ...
to establish a
colony A colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule, which rules the territory and its indigenous peoples separated from the foreign rulers, the colonizer, and their ''metropole'' (or "mother country"). This separated rule was often orga ...
on the island of Newfoundland. Most of the settlers left in the 1620s, but apparently a few stayed on and the site was continuously inhabited. The community is currently known as Cupids.


Site selection

In the early sixteenth century the island of Newfoundland was frequented by seasonal fisherman from many
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an countries. The competition was tough to be the first to sail to the rich fishing grounds around the island and indeed the rest of North America. The island had some obvious advantages over the rest of North America as a site to establish an English colony. The island was very familiar to fisherman and explorers, especially the bays and coves on the Avalon Peninsula where many would set up temporary shelters as they prosecuted the fishery. The merchants and owners of the vessels that made those trips to Newfoundland had recognized the importance that the strategic location that Newfoundland had placed on establishing a permanent settlement. Time was ripe for a permanent settlement in Newfoundland. Given the failure of Walter Raleigh to establish a colony at Roanoke Island in 1584 and the successful settlement at Jamestown in 1607 and on learning that
Samuel de Champlain Samuel de Champlain (; 13 August 1574#Fichier]For a detailed analysis of his baptismal record, see #Ritch, RitchThe baptism act does not contain information about the age of Samuel, neither his birth date nor his place of birth. – 25 December ...
had sailed into the Saint Lawrence River, St. Lawrence to initiate the settlement of
New France New France (, ) was the territory colonized by Kingdom of France, France in North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Kingdom of Great Br ...
, pressure was mounting to lay claim to the resource rich New World. King James was told that the French had made attempts to over-winter in Newfoundland and it was only a matter of time before a successful colony would be established by the French and lay claim to the island. Kevin Major, ''As Near to Heaven by Sea: A History of Newfoundland and Labrador'', 2001, In 1607 Bristol's '' Society of Merchant Venturers'' which included Sir
Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England under King James I. Bacon argued for the importance of nat ...
, Sir Percival Willoughby and John Slany, had formed the Newfoundland Company with shares selling at £25. The Newfoundland Company had then petitioned the King James I, seeking approval to establish a colony in Newfoundland. John Guy visited the island in 1608 to scout possible locations for a settlement, selecting Cuper's Cove as his preferred location. The Privy Council accepted his petition on 2 May 1610 issuing a
charter A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the ...
to the Earl of Northampton (Guy's patron). In 1610 John Guy, his brother Phillip, his brother-in-law William Colston and 38 colonists had set sail from Bristol aboard three ships. D.W. Prowse, ''A History of Newfoundland'', 1895, In August 1610 they made landfall in the area Guy had visited two years earlier to set about building a settlement.


Site construction (1610—1611)

John Guy had landed at Cuper's Cove in August 1610 and is described in a letter from John Guy to Sir Percival Willoughby from Cuper's Cove,"Cupers Cove – Early English Settlement"
/ref> 6 October 1610 where it states in part: The colonists all male were made up of masons,
carpenter Carpentry is a skilled trade and a craft in which the primary work performed is the cutting, shaping and installation of building materials during the construction of buildings, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc. Carpenter ...
s, blacksmiths and other apprentices to build fortifications and dwellings to prepare for the coming winter. The charter had stipulated that the settlers of Cuper's Cove were not to interfere with the operation of the migratory fishery in any way. It wasn't deemed a problem, for the Cuper's Cove area was not considered prime fishing grounds, but certainly over winter they would have time to prepare for the next year fishing season and they would be the first on those grounds. Guy and his colonists began clearing the area and by May 1611 the colony consisted of a dwelling house and a store house contained within a . x . enclosure, a second dwelling house, a work house and a forge. Within the confines of the settlement were two saw pits and a wooden defense works upon which three
cannon A cannon is a large-caliber gun classified as a type of artillery, which usually launches a projectile using explosive chemical propellant. Gunpowder ("black powder") was the primary propellant before the invention of smokeless powder during th ...
s were mounted.William Gilbert, ''Baccalieu Trail Heritage Corporation: Journeys Through Time'', 2005, Pamphlet One of the first items of construction was to dig a cellar, which in recent excavations has determined it to be roughly . across with a maximum depth of seven feet, walled-up with flat stone and back-filled with rubble. The dwellings were made of cobble and flagstone floors with some areas covered by wooden timbers and floor boards. The end of the first winter, a mild winter, the report back to England was very optimistic where Guy notes that the months of October and November are both warmer and drier than in England.Guy's letter to John Slany.
The livestock they had brought from England had thrived and had added to their numbers. The colonists built, along with the dwellings and support structures, six fishing vessels and a twelve tonne bark, ''Endeavour.'' Fortifications were by means of a
palisade A palisade, sometimes called a stakewall or a paling, is typically a row of closely placed, high vertical standing tree trunks or wooden or iron stakes used as a fence for enclosure or as a defensive wall. Palisades can form a stockade. Etymo ...
wall of local cut poles sixteen feet long set upright all around the perimeter of the settlement. The fortress was completed by the summer of 1612 to defend the plantation against the pirate Peter Easton.


Settlement expansion (1612–1613)

The plantation continued development and by 8 September 1612 a dwelling for Henry Crout and his ward Thomas Willoughby had begun. By the spring of 1613 at least sixteen structures were built on the site. Much of the land had been cleared for the planting of crops and to allow livestock to pasture. John Guy had stayed at the colony during the winter of 1610 to 1611 and had returned to England in the autumn of 1611. Four of the colonists had died during the winter of 1610 to 1611. In the spring of 1612, Guy had returned, this time with more adventurers and livestock. Guy, an
alderman An alderman is a member of a Municipal government, municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law with similar officials existing in the Netherlands (wethouder) and Belgium (schepen). The term may be titular, denotin ...
and sound churchman, had also brought with him a clergyman, Rev. Erasmus Stourton. During the winter of 1612 to 1613 sixty-two people were known to be at the plantation. That winter eight deaths were recorded, all apparently from
scurvy Scurvy is a deficiency disease (state of malnutrition) resulting from a lack of vitamin C (ascorbic acid). Early symptoms of deficiency include weakness, fatigue, and sore arms and legs. Without treatment, anemia, decreased red blood cells, gum d ...
. There was also a birth recorded, the first English child born in Newfoundland and what is now Canada. The child was born to Nicholas Guy and his wife on 27 March 1613.


Beothuk contact

No mention of the natives of Newfoundland, namely the Beothuk, is made in the petition of the charter of the Newfoundland Company, a fact that had helped speed it through the Privy Council. There was a brief notation in the charter that stated explicitly any contact with natives would be to convert them to
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. Guy had assumed that the natives had long since left Conception Bay, but he knew that they lived not far away. One reason for his construction of the bark ''Indeavour'' was to explore nearby Trinity Bay and to make contact with the Beothuk. Two failed attempts to make contact with the Beothuk overland (see article on Henry Crout and construction of Crout's Way) Guy had readied his bark and one of his newly constructed fishing vessels to set off in search of the Beothuk at Trinity Bay. In October 1612, Guy, Crout and seventeen others set sail in both vessels in search of the Beothuks. They had entered Mount Eagle Bay ( Hopeall) on October 22 and two days later they found several Beothuk houses in a place they called ''Savage Harbour'' located at Dildo Arm. They found a path leading to a freshwater pond that proved to also be a campground for the Beothuk.Guy's journal October 26 - November 10, 1612
A modern excavation at this site called Russell's Point has yielded many artifacts of this campsite. John Guy and his party eventually did meet with the Beothuk at a Bull Arm, where they shared gifts and a meal. The Beothuk had lit a fire to express their willingness to trade and they also produced a white flag made from a
wolf The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the grey wolf or gray wolf, is a Canis, canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of Canis lupus, subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, includin ...
skin.


Post colony use

Captain John Mason was appointed the new Proprietary Governor of the
colony A colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule, which rules the territory and its indigenous peoples separated from the foreign rulers, the colonizer, and their ''metropole'' (or "mother country"). This separated rule was often orga ...
in 1615, but he too grew tired of disputes with fishermen and with the difficulties of the terrain, and abandoned the colony in 1621 for
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. Patuxet tribesman, Tisquantum (better known as Squanto) was brought here by Sir John Slany in 1617 and worked with Captain John Mason, governor of the Newfoundland Colony. While being here, he encountered a ship's captain by the name of Thomas Dermer, who had worked with both Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Captain John Smith. After staying for many months at this site, Squanto thought he would be able to return home to the modern-day American state of
Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...
, but Dermer took him back to London to meet Gorges and ask for permission about the trip to Squanto's homeland. He eventually found a ship bounding for his homeland, but later discovered that his tribe had been all wiped out by an unknown disease. There is some evidence that an unorganized settlement remained here possibly into the eighteenth century before finally being abandoned, although the cove remained a popular location for visiting fishermen. Cuper's Cove is now known as the Town of Cupids.


Names and Details of the Original 39 Colonists

* William Colston, brother-in-law of John Guy * Richard Fletcher, master pilot * John Guy * Philip Guy, brother of John Guy * John Morris, died 1 February 1610 * Thomas Percy, died 11 December 1610 * Thomas Stone, died 13 April 1611 * Marmaduke Whittington, died 15 February 1610 of smallpox


See also

*
List of communities in Newfoundland and Labrador This article lists unincorporated communities of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Incorporated towns and cities are incorporated municipalities and can be found on List of municipalities in Newfoundland and Labrador. Newfoundl ...
* Bristol's Hope *
British colonization of the Americas The British colonization of the Americas is the history of establishment of control, settlement, and colonization of the continents of the Americas by Kingdom of England, England, Kingdom of Scotland, Scotland, and, after 1707, Kingdom of Grea ...


References


External links


Newfoundland and Labrador Museum

Baccalieu ''Crossroads for Cultures''
{{coord, 47, 32, 43.52, N, 53, 13, 55.27, W, region:CA-NL_type:city, display=title Populated coastal places in Canada Populated places established in 1610 1621 disestablishments in North America Former English colonies 1610 establishments in the British Empire