Foxtrap: Located between Long Pond and Kelligrews, Foxtrap also includes an area known, when it was first settled as "Middle Bight", a bight or bite being defined as a "water area in a broad indentation of the shoreline".

Middle Bight was renamed Codner in 1906, after a gentleman by the name Samuel Codner. The following is written about Codner in the ENL: CODNER, SAMUEL (1776-1858). Born Devon, England. Came to St. John's and until March, dn1844 operated a mercantile establishment in what is now Bishop's Cove at the foot of Adelaide Street.

While Codner was returning to England in 1821 a storm arose which threatened to wreck his vessel.

A religious man, he vowed that if he reached port safely he would devote his resources to the spreading of Christian virtues. To fulfil his pledge, in a London coffee house on June 30, 1823, Codner founded the Society for Educating the Poor of Newfoundland. Codner died in England on August 5, 1858.

It is assumed that the area in which Middle Bight or Codner was located was known for fox hunting, however, such is not actually the case.

The historian, E.R. Seary is cited in the ENL as stating that Foxtrap was so called from a local tradition that "the settlement grew up in a previously unnamed district where only foxes were caught in the rabbit- snares".

Seary also is recorded as suggesting that a "foxtrap" is referred to by some, such as Archdeacon Edward Wix, as a "pair of moccasins. Of particular interest to many historians is the story of "The Battle of Foxtrap".

Here is the version offered in the ENL: Of all legends and incidents associated with particular communities in Newfoundland, perhaps the most famous is the "Battle of Foxtrap" (so-called by D.W. Prowse: 1895, pp. 511-512), or the "Battle of Foxtrap Bridge" as contemporary newspaper accounts described the series of civil disturbances which greeted the building of the railway around Conception Bay from 1880 to 1882.

Prowse (pp. 511-512) described the initial incident: "In 1881 the inhabitants of the south shore of Conception Bay, believing that all unutterable evils would happen away their to them if the line went through their lands, stoned the engineers, took instruments, and drove them from their work.

The inspector of police, Mr. Carty, and the police magistrate, [Prowse], with only eleven men, were left to contend with a mad, excited crowd of about five hundred men and women armed with guns and every variety of weapon.

The arrest of the ringleader at the point of bayonet, and firm action of the police authorities, eventually restored order. All this unseemly, dangerous disturbance was directly caused by the unscrupulous fabrication of falsehoods to stir up these poor, ignorant people to oppose the railway."

In Prowse's view the Foxtrap incident was sparked by a vicious rumour, spread by railway opponents, that a toll gate was to be erected to tax all pedestrians and vehicles; furthermore, it was claimed, valuable farm land and horses would be subject to taxation and some other parcels of land would be annexed.

Despite assurances from their member in the House of Assembly, Joseph Little, their clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Coley, and the local schoolmaster that this was not the case, the local residents, believing people to be in the paid employ of the interests of the railway, continued their rioting for five days, beginning on July 26, 1881.

St. John's newspapers, virulently partisan on the issue of the railway, had a field day with the events. In a survey of newspapers chronicling the event, Eric Moon (1959, pp. 39-41) writes that the Morning Chronicle nailed the news of the riot with "a four-decker headline:

Armed Resistance to the Railroad Fox Trap to the Rescue Native Amazonian Troops in the Field Latest News from the Front. "Observer," an eye witness who commented in the paper, wrote of "One ancient virago, with arms bared, hair streaming wildly behind [leading] ... the troops, brandishing the fork with which cod are thrown on the stages, and [declaring]... that she will let daylight into the stomachs of these invaders" (Moon, p. 41).

The Chamber of Commerce, in its annual report, condemned the action of the railway while the Telegram waggishly congratulated "General Prowse, Inspector Carty and the gallant little army under their command" and later proposed creating "the Order of the Broomstick.. the arms to consist of three middle-aged women rampant, on a red ground, with Fox Trap Bridge in the distance, and the General returning from the field of gore with captured broomsticks" (quoted in Moon, p. 42).

The Battle of Foxtrap was waged, as the accounts indicated, mainly by men and women wielding a variety of such weapons as pitch forks, knives, broomsticks, hatchets, and in the case of women, aprons laden with sharp stones.

Used with permission from "Uncovering the Origin of 1001 Unique Place Names in Newfoundland and Labrador" 2021 Jennifer Leigh Hill

Address of this page: http://nl.ruralroutes.com/Foxtrap