A well-known local researcher who has dedicated his life’s work to documenting the province’s Irish descendants is being celebrated this weekend in Torbay as part of the Land & Sea Festival.
Over the last half century, John Mannion and his wife Maura documented every possible person of Irish descent they could find in church records and merchant ledgers.
He and Maura arrived in Newfoundland in 1967, tracing family trees, speaking with seniors, and scouring the records.
Much of that laborious work is now available online in a searchable database known as the Mannion Project. He says Irish settlement in Newfoundland dates back to the mid-to-late 1700s, and is closely linked to the migratory fishery based in England’s West Country.
West Country sea captains would call in to Waterford to collect provisions for the fishermen. While there, they would recruit young Irish men for the fishery from Waterford, Wexford, and even as far as Cork.
Women started arriving in numbers in the early 1800s and the rest is history. Mannion will officially launch his final book today in Torbay, while the Mannion Project, which has caught the attention of the Irish government, will be officially launched in Cork on September 5.