Thursday July 29, 2010

Information
The Winterton Boat Building Museum offers visitors the chance to step back in time with various wonderful exhibits. The museum has The Oldest English Headstone in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The museum also displays a general store, Transport & Communication devices, a Cooperage Shop, a wonderfully preserved horse drawn hearse and agriculture equipment. The Museum also houses artifacts from the early school years. During the 1920s Winterton was so prosperous and self confident that the community school installed imported ceiling tiles from the British.


The cooperage was a shop where round wooden containers, which we generally call barrels, were manufactured. These casks were an essential element of life both at sea and ashore, and wooden containers made from staves and hoops served many storage purposes. Aboard ship they held provisions, various kinds of cargo and, on certain fishing and whaling vessels, the catch. Casks intended for spirits, molasses, whale oil or other liquids had to be water-tight.
   

A general store complete with cash register and products.

Agriculture and wood working equipment

   
Horse drawn hearse with attachable sled for winter use. Domestic household artifacts from the town of Winterton.
   
Several years ago, a group of students working on a summer project uncovered an old headstone in the cemetery beside St. Luke’s Anglican Church in Winterton. The date on the headstone is 1700, predating by almost one hundred years the headstone on the right.

The stone is a slab of local grey sandstone measuring 27 inches by 23 inches with some chipping and damage around the edges. The inscription is in English with spelling typical of the period.


The significance of the incising on the back can only be guessed.

William Lincefild died twenty-five years after the earliest recorded settlement in Scilly Cove and only three years after the French under D’Iberville pillaged and burnt Scilly Cove (Winterton). There were four houses in the cove at that time.

The Inscription on the front

1700
HARE LYETH
THE BODY OF
WILIAM LINCEFILD
WHO DEPARTED THIS
LIFE OCTOBER THE 7
DAY ANNO DOMINI
1700

The headstone on the right is dated 1796 nearly 100 years later than William Lincefilds. It marked the grave of another young person, Martha Clerk who died at the age of eighteen. We have no details of how she died.

The Inscription reads,
TO THE MEMORY
OF
MARTHA WIFE
OF JOSEPH CLERK
WHO DEPARTED THIS
LIFE
MARCH YE 27 1794
AGED 18 YEARS


Visitor # 2079

Winterton Boat Building Museum

Thanks to Mariner Resource Opportunities Network Inc. for their  technical help and support .