There are two small cemeteries at Battle Harbour know locally as the "old" and "new" cemeteries. The "new cemetery" is located near the Church of St. James the Apostle in a small peat-filled valley and was started in the 1920's. The "old cemetery" is on northern end of the island is believed to be the "little burying ground" consecrated in 1848 by Bishop Edward Field, a Church of England Bishop who stationed in Newfoundland during the mid-nineteenth century.

The tumbled and fallen tombstones of early settlers include employees of the islands former fish merchant and trading firms, John Slade and Co and Baine Johnston & Co. Ltd, and the ancestors of families who still work and or visit Battle Harbour each season.

Battle Harbour Historic Trust Inc is working out a plan to maintain these cemetery subject to the availability of funding and staff. Donations of cash, goods and/or services for this project could significantly expedite our time lines.

A partial listing of headstone surnames are listed below for those interested in family ties to this Labrador island fishing settlement. Dates of death range from 1846 through to 1847 and some of the more ornate headstones were imported from Poole, England.

Barfoot
Bendell
Bradley
Hedderson
Florence
Mead
Manston
Pye
Russell
Soward
Sparks
Sweetapple

Volunteers have transcribed visible stones in both cemetaries and listings can be found at http://ngb.chebucto.org/Cemetery/cem-bat-hbr-unk-lab.shtml and http://ngb.chebucto.org/Cemetery/cem-bat-hbr-old-ang-lab.shtml

Other links to family trees can be seen in the centuries old ochre based paint graffiti still visible on the original beams and framing timbers of the Salmon and Flour Stores at Battle Harbour and in the records of births, deaths and marriages from the Battle Harbour parish http://ngb.chebucto.org/Parish/1lab-parish-idx.shtml

Many of these family names include lineages that trace back to what is frequently known as England's "West Country" and which includes Poole, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Cornwall, Somerset and Wiltshire.

Battle Harbour is considered by many to be the traditional home of the Metis Nation in Labrador based on the intermarriage of early settlers with Inuit residents. Battle Harbour Historic Trust Inc is working with Metis Nation representatives to develop interpretative opportunities at Battle Harbour portraying this important feature of the settlement's history.

There are very few documents available at Battle Harbout that relate to families who lived and/or worked at Battle Harbour. Resources that others have found useful include

Provincial Archives at The Rooms in St. John's, NL (see
http://www.therooms.ca/archives/) and the not-for-profit organization called
Family History Society of Newfoundland and Labrador (http://www.fhsnl.ca/).