Rencontre East, Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada
Isolated and Loving It
The Hartigans of the Point
by Maurice Burke
It is not known when the first Hartigan settled on the Point. His name was Patrick Hartigan and he had come from Ireland to work for a man named Sweetman in Placentia. He married a woman by the name of Johanna Power from Branch, St. Mary's Bay. Some time after that they moved to Rencontre East. It would appear that the point of land which divides the two harbours - Little Harbour and the main harbour - was unsettled as the Hartigan family obtained title to the whole point and when I was a boy it was fenced down to the water's edge on both sides with a wooden gate as its entrance.
On this Point, sometimes referred to as Hartigan's Point or Point Pleasant, Patrick and Johanna Hartigan raised their family of three boys, Nicholas, William, and Michael and two girls, Mary and Anne. Mary married Henry (Uncle Harry) Giovannini and went to live in the bottom of Little Harbour. As I recall, from spending a few summers in Rencontre, Little Harbour was referred to as "The Brook". Anne (Aunt Annie) went to live in Gloucester. She never married and died in that city.
The three Hartigan men carried on the business with their father. They had a store, a schooner and boats to carry on the herring fishery. One of the schooners was called "The Annie" after their sister. Nicholas (called "Uncle Nickie" in my time) and William (Uncle Will) met and married two sisters from Trepassey whose family name was James. Nicholas married Frances James (Aunt Phon) and William married Esther James (Aunt Essen). Michael Hartigan married Ellen Kinsella from Belleoram, Fortune Bay. They are my grandparents.
It appears that they carried on a successful business and were able to employ the sons of William and Michael (Nicholas had no children) in the business as well as men from the main community. Even as a young boy I remember that the Hartigan seine boat carried on the herring fishery and would sell the bait to schooners who were enroute to the Grand Banks. They also sold bait to Maritime schooners and schooners from eastern United States.
The Hartigan establishment is a thing of the past as the members of the family moved away in the depression years. Of the three houses on the Point, Uncle Nickie's is gone and Uncle Will Hartigan's house is vacant (it is at present owned by the family of the late Ernest Augot). The house of Michael and Ellen Hartigan still stands and is occupied by Albert Oakey. It was in that house that I was born.
All of the orginal Hartigan men have long since died and some are buried in the little Roman Catholic Cemetery in Rencontre and others in Curling. Patrick and Johanna Hartigan, Michael and Ellen Hartigan, William Hartigan , Frances Hartigan (wife of Nicholas) are buried in Rencontre and Esther Hartigan (wife of William) and Nicholas Hartigan are buried in Curling. During their lives they added much to cultural and social life of the community. The children that they raised went on to be successful in other fields after they left the family business. Their names are but a memory in the lives of those who knew them, but they left behind a legacy to their children which is being passed down in their descendants. When I think of the heritage they left us and the schooners they skippered over the years, I am reminded of these lines from Tenneyson:
And the Stately ships go on to
To their haven under the hill
But O for the touch of a vanished hand
And the sound of a voice that is stillBreak, break, break
At the foot of they crags. 0 Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.