On July 2, 1913 there was a frightening explosion in Rosedale, long considered a part of Glovertown, when the boiler in Alexander Rose’s sawmill blew apart sending steam, boiler parts, board and log fragments, parts of human bodies and a cloud of sawdust high into the air. The accident killed six people: Alexander Rose, his son Jim, Adeline Babstock, and three Whalen brothers: John, William and James.
Pit props were logs cut to specific lengths -- usually 4 feet, 7 ½ feet or 9 feet. They were cut typically for use as structural supports in mine tunnels, but were often used as pulpwood. Contracts to cut pit props were usually awarded (often by governments) to sawmill operators. Louis Briffett and Company as well as Baxter Burry made Glovertown a leading port in Newfoundland’s pit prop trade. According to local lore the second shipload from Glovertown was sunk by a German submarine about twenty miles off Cape St. Francis and only the chief steward, his pet cat and two kittens survived.
During the period 1910 – 1925 the Fishermen’s Protective Union was the strongest social, economic and political force in Glovertown. Its mandate was to break the credit system by which merchants perpetuated the often cruel-to-fishermen economic and political monopoly in Newfoundland. The FPU built and ran a cash store in Glovertown North. The store carried a variety of goods including kerosene oil, felt, soap, sugar, flour and tea. The Union was a kind of fraternal organization in Glovertown. Its members provided a lot of entertainment through annual parading and community ceremonies ripe with singing and dancing. At these events FPU members flew FPU flags; they also wore FPU buttons and FPU sweaters, each bearing the emblem of a codfish.
Sometimes pulpwood drivers on the Terra Nova River found themselves at the Sloo (a small pond that empties into the Terra Nova River near John’s Pond) with several barrels of gasoline destined for Mollyguajeck Lake and not enough riverboats to carry the load. What did these inventive folks do? They lashed the heavy casks to boom sticks thereby making an “oilboat” which they towed down all the steadies enroute. On the rattles they let their “oilboat” run free, dislodging it when necessary from river rocks, river banks and other river impediments.
Driving pulpwood down the Terra Nova River was not all hard work. Homemade comedy was part of the entertainment. Joe Lane, one of the great Terra Nova pulpwood drivers, was a master at creating bunkhouse fun. He would pretend that he hated any reference to sheep. To torment him, some of the other drivers would shout “Sheep! Sheep!” or “Baa! Baa!” That was the signal. Quick as a wink Joe would grab an alder from under his bunk and run towards the nearest man who had shouted the signalling words. If caught, the shouter got a lacing with Joe’s alder. Joe would then head for another shouter, then another, then another and so on. Of course the trick was to shout “Sheep! Sheep!” or “Baa! Baa!” so that Joe thought someone else not you had said it. Then the wrong fellow got the alder licking which made the other drivers laugh.
On November 9, 1909 the Little Jap, a typical Newfoundland fishing schooner of fifty-eight tons and built for the Labrador fishery, left her home port, Deer Island, and headed for St. John’s with her crew, her summer’s catch of cod, and a number of men who wished to visit the capital city. Aboard were: from Deer Island five Felthams – John, Benjamin, Charles, Abraham and Caleb -- together with Arthur King, a local teacher; from Gooseberry Island Robert Payne, Thomas Taylor, Cater House and Caleb House; from Fair Islands Samuel Boland, George Boland; from Bragg’s Island Jacob Sturge. The Little Jap vanished without a known trace leaving pain and sorrow in her wake-- much of it in Glovertown and nearby settlements.
Grey’s Store in Glovertown was located near the mouth of the Terra Nova River not far from where the Salvation Army Citadel now stands. Born in the early 1920s of the prosperity promised by the pulp and sulphite mill the store was an important commercial center until it was destroyed by the infamous Glovertown fire of 1946. The store’s branch, Grey’s Terra Nova Store, located in the bustling Town of Terra Nova, became the biggest local supplier for the Anglo Newfoundland Development Company’s Terra Nova Woods Division.
According to some local records Robert Baxter Stroud, a well-known Glovertown guide for anglers and hunters, secured for Lord Elphonstone, the brother-in-law of England’s King George V, a noted caribou stag head of forty-nine points – a valuable trophy which was displayed in Buckingham Palace.
On October 28, 1932 the following blurb appeared in a St. John’s newspaper: “On exhibition in Bowring Bros. window in St. John’s is a citron weighing eight pounds, two ounces, which was grown by Mr. R.B. Stroud, Alexander Bay. Mr. Stroud last spring planted in the open some citron seeds. He had two vines and on them grew 22 melons which weighed nearly 150 pounds.”
According to local lore, the first moose in Newfoundland to be killed under a legal license issued by the Government of Newfoundland was shot by Glovertown’s Fred Stroud.
When the Terra Nova Sulphite company went bankrupt in or around 1922 it had a lot of property in Glovertown including: a barn, an Old Plant, a staff house, a doctor’s house, a manager’s house, an office building and several Company offices. Most of the remains are now concrete fragments.
Several sources record the following burials on Stroud’s Point, Bloody Bay (now Glovertown): Richard Elliot Stroud (Nov. 2,1878), his wife Deborah Viney ( Smith) Stroud (July 6, 1857), their daughter Eleanor around 1835), their daughter Ann (around March 1842), their daughter Typhena (around 1847), their son Robert May 24, 1861), their grandson Philip Barnes (Dec. 4, 1880).