Merchants of Fogo, The

DESCRIPTION: "Come all ye toil-warn fishermen ... lend an ear; Beware of those cursed merchants, in their dealings they're not fair; For fish they'll give half value." All local merchants are thieves except the Hodge brothers; "they've showed justice to each man"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1929 (Greenleaf/Mansfield-BalladsAndSeaSongsOfNewfoundland)
KEYWORDS: greed accusation commerce nonballad
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Greenleaf/Mansfield-BalladsAndSeaSongsOfNewfoundland 149, "The Merchants of Fogo" (1 text)
Roud #17749
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Merchant's Song" (subject: Newfoundland's truck system) and references there
NOTES [490 words]: Fogo, on Fogo Island, is up the East Coast about 170 miles north of Saint John's. Greenleaf/Mansfield-BalladsAndSeaSongsOfNewfoundland states "This song with its coarse slander and gossip was made up in praise of the Hodge Brothers [by] ... a man ... hoping to curry favor." Mr Hodge, however, was not impressed. - BS
That this is about real merchants seems likely; the Earles were a well-known merchant family, and they worked in Fogo: "Another long-lived Fogo merchant establishment, and the one most familiar to older residents today, was run by the Earle family" (Clarke, p. 153). DictNewfLabrador does not mention a Pat Earle, but we have a likely relative:
EARLE, HENRY J. (1841-1934). b. St. John's 25 Dec.; established business on own account 1870; M[ember] H[ouse of] A[ssembly] 1900-1913; d. Glovertown 26 Dec... Earle went to Twillingate in 1864 as a clerk for Slade and Co. When that firm was dissolved Earle and a partner took over the business. After this partnership ended Earle continued to operate a general fishery supply business based in Fogo. He was elected MHA for Fogo four times as a liberal. (DictNewfLabrador, p. 95). Based on Clarke, pp. 153-154, Henry John Earle was the patriarch of the Earle family, going into partnership with John W. Owen in 1869 and taking sole ownership of the Fogo business in 1893. There is a photo of him on p. 153 of Clarke.
In 1912 the company became "Earle, Sons & Company"; in 1917, "Earle Sons & Company Ltd," run by Henry's son Harold. The various Earle operations, which came to include a canning plant as well as stores and which were eventually run by Brian Earle, shut down in 1967/1968 (Clarke, p. 154).
Clarke also gives us a hint about 'Thomas Hodge and John Hodge." On p. 152, Clarke says, "From the 1870s on, the Watermans were partnered with Thomas and Richard Hodge, Thomas having been William Waterman and Company's Fogo agent.... As of 1871 Thomas had set up premises on Wigwam Point.... Later, another member of the family, John Wheadon Hodge, the company's agent at Tilting, bought out the company's assets on both Fogo and Change Islands. John W. Hodge ran the enterprise until 1918 when, on the death of his two Sons (sic.), he retired to Toronto."
Pickett, pp. 128-129, says that "In the 1860s the Slade interests in Fogo were sold to John W. Owen [eventually to be taken over by the Earles] and a second major merchant establishment was started by Thomas W. Hodge (these two firms were the major merchant establishments in Fogo well into the Twentieth Century, known afer ownership changes, as Henry Earle and Sons and the Newfoundland-Labrador Export Company."
A good look through the Earle Company records would probably either find a Pat Earle or tell us who is really meant (since the name might have been distorted or deliberately hidden). This hints that the other characters in the song could also be identified, if one could check the Fogo records. - RBW
BibliographyLast updated in version 5.3
File: GrMa149

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