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Queen’s Cove (Photo courtesy Jeff Spurrell)
The community had originally been called Southern Bight, but some time before 1898, maybe in honor of Victoria who was queen at the time, it became known as Queen’s Cove.
Earliest Settlers
It may well be conjectured that the cove was settled in the late 1860s or early 1870s. The earliest record of a Goobie born at Queen’s Cove was that of Maria in 1874. She was a daughter of Newman and Ann Elizabeth (nee March) Goobie. Newman was a son of Richard and Charlotte (nee Benson) Goobie of Old Perlican. It appears that Richard and Charlotte were “on in age” when they and their adult children settled at what would become Queen’s Cove. The Goobies at Queen’s Cove descend from Richard’s and Charlotte’s sons Nathaniel, Newman, and Joseph.
The Gregorys were related to the Goobies through marriage. From Old Shop, Nathaniel and his wife Dinah (nee Brinston) Gregory and several of their children arrived at Queen’s Cove shortly after the Goobies. The first record of a child born of this line was that of Elisha, son of Nathaniel and Dinah Gregory, who was born at near-by Black Brook in 1874.
Through the marriage of a son William George to a Goobie woman, the line of Reuben Butt came to the community. Likewise for the line of William Henry Ash who married a Gregory of Queen’s Cove. Not until the early 1900s did the Gosses (from Long Beach) settle at Queen’s Cove when the family of Eleazer and Rhoda (nee Smith) Gosse and their children arrived.
Not until after 1880 were other family lines introduced to Queen’s Cove. In the 1890s, through a marriage with Maria (nee Goobie), Edmund Whalen from Caplin Cove settled at Queen’s Cove.
Through marriage, for a brief period the family of Samuel James Benson and his wife Emma Jane (nee Goobie) resided at Queen’s Cove. As did the family of Herbert James Cramm and his wife Jemima May (nee Cooper).
Much later, in the 1930s, the family of Abraham Spurrell from Butter Cove and his wife Elizabeth Jane (nee Whalen) relocated with their children to Queen’s Cove. It was not until the mid-1940s, when Mildred Eliza Goobie married Albert Winston Howse, that the Howse line from Hillview was introduced to Queen’s Cove.
Early Occupations
Besides the subsistence activities of inshore fishing and farming, that of lumbering/logging was the primary occupation of the men in the earlier decades of the community.
Religious Denominations
For the first generation or more, the only denomination at Queen’s Cove was that of Methodism. The arrival of the Gosses in the early 1900s marked the introduction of the Church of England there.
Note: This article is subject to further correction and revision.
NOTE: See also information from Decks Awash, Volume 15, Number 6, November-December 1986