History
According to D. W. Prowse (1895) the earliest documented inhabitant of the 'Bay of Arbs' (today known as Bay de Verde) was Isaac Dethick, an English planter who was expelled from Placentia in 1662 when the French took over that town. There is no doubt that there were settlers such as the Taverners already established at Bay de Verde when he arrived. In 1675 seven families and their servants, numbering close to 150 people, had erected eleven rooms and stages in the harbour.
The best record of the period comes from the journal of Abbe Baudoin, dated February 2 to February 6, 1697. Baudoin, who travelled with Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville's raiders, noted that "there were in this harbour fourteen settlers well established and ninety good men." During King William's War, the village was destroyed in the Avalon Peninsula Campaign. These French raiding parties destroyed the community and killed a number of inhabitants again during Queen Anne's War in 1705.
One of the early family names of Bay de Verde is Taverner. According to H.F. Shortis (1910) William Taverner was a naval officer and surveyor on a British man-of-war who later worked on a Newfoundland map of 1745.
The main road in Bay de Verde is Masters Road named after John Masters an apprenticed to William Taverner about 1700–1701. The Taverner family of Poole and Bay de Verde – a moderately well-off group which divided its time between Poole and Newfoundland.
Abraham, William Taverner's brother, an obscure figure, was the Newfoundland agent for the London merchant, James Campbell, who had extensive plantations at Bay de Verde. Campbell was financial agent in London for Captain John Moody who had been commander of the Newfoundland garrison during Major Thomas Lloyd’s absence in 1704–1705 and who was an avowed adversary of Lloyd. Although many of the Newfoundland planters tried to keep away from both Lloyd and Moody, William Taverner led a group which, early in 1708, complained about Lloyd’s exploitation of the colonists.
Read more about this topic: Bay De Verde
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