History society looking for stories of Conception Bay’s early womenfolk

By Olivia Bradbury, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The Family History Society of Newfoundland and Labrador (FHSNL) is working to document the history of Conception Bay’s unsung heroes – the women who helped populate and raise the families who spread out along the shoreline.

The project, called Mapping the Mobility of Women in 19th Century Conception Bay, is funded through the federal New Horizons Program for Seniors.

“What we’re trying to do is find history of people that would otherwise be lost,” said historical fiction author Ida Linehan Young, who is the project coordinator.

“They would marry and they’d lose their last name,” said Linehan Young. “They’d lose their identity. They might never get back home. They might never see where they were born and reared or any siblings or anything again. So we’d like to hear those stories if we could.”

Linehan Young said the project is less interested in genealogy and more in the context of why women moved.

“We want the stories that are attached to that,” she said, whether it be due to work, marriage or even shipwrecks.

“There’s lots of books about men,” Linehan Young said. “But women were the integral part of keeping us all together.”

Women were often viewed as property more so than people, she added.

“That’s sad to say, but that’s the reality of it,” said Linehan Young. “It’s not like nowadays. So those kinds of stories tell about their strength and their character and what they had to go through. We’re going to lose it so if we can capture that somehow, isn’t that amazing?”

Linehan Young said the group is focusing on Conception Bay because an island, or province-wide  scope would be too wide to manage. “You need a place to start, so our swimming pool for now is Conception Bay,” she said. “Who knows, maybe next year we’ll move on, or maybe we’ll record it some other way or something. I don’t know. But for now, we want to keep it to Conception Bay just to get a good taste of whether we can even get the history.”

The Family History Society is trying to connect with community groups or other places people gather to tell stories. They have met with mayors to discuss the project, and have distributed a press release about it. At a recent craft fair in Harbour Grace, Linehan Young handed out the press release to visitors, asking residents if they knew their history.

“I connected with a couple of people who knew their paternal and maternal genealogy and had stories for me,” said Linehan Young. “I haven’t actually met with them yet, but they’re going to gather those stories.”

Linehan Young said the project will largely rely on word of mouth. The aim is to get into group meetings, find people who have relevant information, and then interview them. The group will record audio, potentially video, and upload the stories to the society’s website.

As an historical fiction author, Linehan Young is intrigued by the project. “I am there to do this project, but it interests me. I love seniors, I love the stories. It’s just my wheelhouse,” she said. “I just retired, and this is keeping me busy. And it might inspire 10 books. I don’t know, it might inspire nothing, but you never know.”

Anyone with stories they believe could be relevant to the project can email newhorizons@fhsnl.ca.

“I can get the contact information and, when we get a group in one area — and maybe we’ll never get a group, we might just get that one person — but we’ll go to them and get their stories,” Linehan Young said.