The Newfoundland Ancestor 15:1 [Spring 1999]

THE OLD STONE HOUSE - FERRYLAND

Submitted by Enid O'Brien

This is a letter written by Howard Morry on Jan. 18, 1954 to Michael P. Murphy. Mr. Morry was born around 1885.

Ferryland

Jan. 18, 1954

Dear Sir.

I received your letter about the old stone house and I'll answer your questions as well as I can. I don't know when it was built. There was a very old man, John Rossiter, whose father fought with Nelson on the Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar and he told me that his father told him that when he came over here about 1805, the old stone house and the stores, one of which Bill now uses for a fish store, were old buildings then. No one knew when they were built. Rossiter went home to collect his prize money and was never heard of by his family afterwards. They thought he was probably murdered for the prize money. I guess it was built by the firm of Holdsworth from Dartmouth. There was a stone over the main door with 1825 on it. My grandfather, John Morry, who bought the premises from Sir Arthur Holdsworth in 1840 told me that was when it was repaired. The outside walls were three and a half feet thick, the partitions were two feet thick. It was about sixty feet long and fifty wide, three stories high, the hall was 12 feet wide.

I often lay down on the bench of the window in the kitchen in the sun when I was a little boy. There were twelve rooms in the two lower flats and the top, or attic, was all flush on the front, but on the back three rooms were boarded off for the servants. There was a back stairs in the kitchen going up to the servants' quarters, a large cellar behind the house but attached, and it had a brick arched roof. There was also a basement under the kitchen and the well was also off the kitchen. It had a cobblestone floor which was high by the well but sloped away to a drain which went out through the end of the house to a stone drain. By the way, we are still using that well.

It was torn down in about 1908 as near as I can go. My grandfather went to St. John's to live with his daughters about 1897. He was an old man then. The house was left unoccupied as my father had his own house to keep up in hard times. The stone house was never repaired. The roof gave out, then the windows began to blow out of it. Finally every breeze blew more of the roof away. Then the walls began to fall and at last had to be pulled down as they were getting dangerous.

John Morry, my grandfather, lived there. I used to be intrigued by the big four poster beds with the canopy and the screens around them with two or three steps going up to them. I guess these old folks left the world behind when they went to bed because they could not see, nor hear, when they pulled the screens.

Yes, my house is built on the foundation of the old house, about the sundial. When the Holdsworths lived in it there was a sundial on the cannon, and there was a lovely garden with all kinds of flowers, goose berry and currants and rose bushes, etc. Of course it took money to keep a garden like that going.

I hope you'll get some information from this letter. Will you send me a dozen copies of the magazine you have the story in as I want them to send to some friends and my kids. Also I want to subscribe for the year. Send the bill with the books.

Yours truly,

Howard Morry