West Coast Region ~ Bay St. George District

Surnames

Rowe (Reault)

THE ROWE (REAULT) FAMILY James Rowe was born in 1883 at Port-au-Port as Jacobas Reau. He was the grandson of Augustus Reault of Normandy, France who married Marie Osithe Gaudet at Bay St George in 1854. Osithe, age 19, was from Cheticamp, Cape Breton Island. and he, age unknown, was listed as being from Sol Dept de la Marsh, France (from hand-written transcnptions of the Sandy Point Church records). The former should possibly read Depart de Ia Manche.

Augustus and Osithe had at least six sons - Manuel Louis, Victor Augustus, Louis, Felicien and Amable. They also had two daughters - Marie Louise and Victoire(Victoria). Marie would marry John Dutrey or Dutrueil of France and settle at Felix's Cove while Victoire would marry John Robert Abbott and reside at "The Gravels" Port-au-Port. All the sons settled in the Port-au-Port region except for Amable who migrated further out on to the peninsula towards the Cape St. George area. Another son, possibly Felicien, would later transplant himself to the Bay of Islands. As can be expected, they were all fishermen and Louis, while engaged in the lobster fishery on the French Shore, was the proprietor of a cannery at Green Head in 1890 (near "The Gravels" in Port-au-Port Bay).

One can only speculate on the circumstances surrounding the arrival of the original pioneer, Augustus, to Bay St. George, but popular assumptions would be, firstly, his involvement in the French fishery, and secondly, his having been a deserter whatever the details may be announcing his arrival, Augustus would seem to be the ancestor of all the Rowe families in Bay St. George as well as a large portion, if not all, of the families in the Bay of Islands. At the turn of the 20th century there was also a Rowe group at Channel-Port aux Basques but their connection. if any is not known.

The above information was originally written by Allan Stride and published in the Newfoundland Ancestor, Vol. 3 no. 3, Summer 1987. The information was subsequently sent by Glenn MacDonald and Rick Gaudet to Cyril DuBourdieu who converted it to electronic form. The information was then transcribed and posted to the Internet in August 1998 by Stephen Baker