Photos of the Riggs' Family Reunion

Quilted Lighthouse by Winston and Cathy Newbury

This summer I attended a Riggs' Family Reunion in Newfoundland.

The Riggs' Family came from Stones Cove. Stones Cove is a harbour on Newfoundland's Burin Peninsula that at its peak housed 60 families.

We did not have the reunion in Stones Cove because it was abandoned in the 1950s and is only accessible by boat. All that is left of the community are the foundations of buildings that had foundations and rusted pieces of old wood stoves.

My mother's mother was Frances ("Fanny") Riggs. Her brother, Willoughby ("Bee") Riggs, was the engineer on the schooner Mabel Dorothy when it was lost at sea in 1955.

The catalyst for our reunion this summer was the unveiling of the Mariners' Memorial in Grand Bank. Willoughby Riggs is one of the names recorded on the memorial (along with at least two other names in my family tree).

As a group, we had several dinners together, an excursion to Stones Cove, and attended the unveiling. There are many pictures.

• Pictures taken by me and Manon
• Graham's pictures

I will add links to other pictures as I get them.

If you would like to upload photos, I have found the free versions of both Webshots and Flickr to be easy to work with.

For the free accounts, Webshots allows you to upload 2000 photos. The free Flickr is "unlimited" and has features that make me like it more than Webshots, but you can't see the earlier photos when you have more than 200 and limits how much you can upload per month. But if you are a Rogers.com user, FlickrPro is now free and it is unlimited.

If you email me photos, I will upload them to my account and make them available here.

Other Links:

• A picture of the Mabel Dorothy
• Map of abandoned communities in Fortune Bay and Belle Bay
• 1921 Census of Stones Cove (my grandmother shows up twice with two different birthdays; Willoughby has his name spelled wrong.)
• Mariners' Memorial website

Where is Stones Cove? [Click on "Hyb" and the "-" sign]
View Larger Map