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Geography
Trinity, Bonavista Bay, is located between Gambo and Wesleyville on the north side of the bay in Newfoundland. This logging community is rather distant from fishing grounds and therefore relies on logging, sawmilling, and shipbuilding.[1]
History
In the 1800s Trinity served as a winter site of logging for fishermen from islands in Bonavista Bay, especially from the Fair Islands. Settlement occurred gradually in Trinity but was started when a merchant from Fair Island, James Brown, built a water powered sawmill in a bay within Trinity in 1894. His son built a home close to the sawmill so he could manage it. Eventually other members of the Brown family began moving to Trinity. Other people soon followed, such as, Absalom Brown, Israel Gibbons, and Peter Pond. Trinity appears for the first time in the 1901 Census with a population of fifteen. In 1905 with the establishment of a second sawmill, a steam-powered mill, more families came to Trinity. The new families included the Hunts, Rogers, and Cutlers. In 1911 there were 61 people living in Trinity and by 1935 there were 246. Within ten years the population nearly doubled with 429 people there in 1945, and in 1951 there was a population of 631. The peak population was over 700 in Trinity however after a devastating forest fire in 1961 the population dropped to 400 has logging and sawmilling was greatly hampered.
Church History
The first school in Trinity was held in a residents home in 1905 because there was no structure built to school children. Within a year a Church of England building, which served as a school and a chapel, was built. In the 1930s St. Alban's Church was built, and the first teacher and lay reader in Trinity was a W.B. Brown from 1931 to 1957.[1]
