A home in Notre Dame Bay is being preserved as a Registered Heritage Structure thanks to the efforts of generations of the Wells family who kept an extensive archive of material related to their family and surrounding area.
The home of Thomas and Mary Jane Wells in Little Bay was built around the turn of the last century and was home to three generations of the Wells family.
Thomas Wells, an early recruit to the Newfoundland Constabulary, met Mary Jane – also named Wells – when he was stationed in Twillingate.
An historic image of the home of Thomas and Mary Jane Wells, Little Bay. (via Heritage NL)
The couple married in 1876 and Thomas was posted to Little Bay in 1883. A copper mine opened in Little Bay in the 1870s, and a decade later the town had grown to more than 2,000 residents.
With prosperity came a number of problems, as was documented by Sergeant Wells at the time.
Heritage NL visited Little Bay to assess the condition of the house and to review archival materials kept by the Wells family.
Chair of Heritage NL, Dr. Lisa Daly says the designation highlights the development of a community shaped by a mining boom and provides insight into a family who left a legacy of archival materials related to mining, policing and everyday life in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
