Ten Historic Towns Fogo Information
A series of bad fisheries in the Trinity and Avalon area about 1719 drove merchants and fishermen to seek other grounds One of the better of these grounds was Notre Dame Bay and it was the fishery there that resulted in the settlement of Fogo But also of importance as the developing seal fishers initially prosecuted by landsmen as an inshore resource, later prosecuted offshore at the Labrador Front These factors produced the first permanent settlement at Fogo in 1728 when 143 people wintered there

Principally developed by Poole merchants, notabls Benjamin Lester who had his headquarters at Trinity it became one of the two important northern towns in the Eighteenth Century The trade was dominated, although not exclusively, by the Lesters and their successors the Garlands, John Owen and the Earles In the Nineteenth Century it attained a greater importance and a greater wealth with the opening of the lucrative and bountiful Labrador fishery

The town is set in a low ring of hills which protect the harbour from the weather but not always from other problems Adventuresome American privateers managed to travel far enough north to harass the inhabitants in 1780

Of romantic interest, though possibly legend, is the story of Pamela Sinlrlls Born in Fogo in 1773, the daughter of a Fogo girl and a Visiting naval officer, she moved with her mother to England where she caught the attention of the playwright Sheridan. She also met, and later married Lord Edwald Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was to achieve fame as one of the Irish patriots when he died in jail for his part in the 1798 Rebellion Pamela herself lived until 1830 but never did return to the place of her birth


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