Newfoundland School Society - Samuel Codner

Samuel Codner

Samuel Codner was from Kingskerswell, Devon, in a region with a long-standing tradition of involvement in the Newfoundland cod fishery. At the age of 12 he began a seafaring career by joining his father, uncle, and two brothers at St. John's. Codner rose quickly to the rank of ship's captain and by 1794 he was acting as agent in St John's for Daniel Codner and Company. Even though Codner's firm was one of St John's leading mercantile establishments for more than thirty years, he made his mark in Newfoundland history by founding the Newfoundland School Society, an institution which had a profound effect on the island's educational and cultural development. In 1822, Codner, was saved from a shipwreck while sailing from St. John's to England. As thanksgiving for his deliverance, the next year he established the Newfoundland School Society (also known as the Society for Educating the Poor of Newfoundland) so that Newfoundland children would be educated and "early trained to subordination and their moral habits... greatly improved." Codner immediately set about organizing support and collecting subscriptions for schools in Newfoundland and over the next few years exerted unflagging energy to establish and diffuse the school movement. He circulated a leaflet entitled Schools in Newfoundland, which asserted that a large proportion of the 70,000 inhabitants were without access to instruction.