Taken from The Dictionary of Canadian Biography
CODNER,
SAMUEL,
ship’s captain, businessman, and philanthropist; baptized 16 Feb
1776 in Kingskerswell, England, son of Daniel Codner and Joan, d.5
Aug. 1858 in Dartmouth, England.
Although
Samuel Codner was born in Weston-super-Mare on the west coast of
England, his family came from Kingskerswell, Devon, in a region with
a long-standing tradition of involvement in the Newfoundland cod
fishery. Not surprisingly, at the age of either 12 or 13 he began a
seafaring career by joining his father, uncle, and two brothers at St
John’s. At this time his family owned three ships: a 92-ton
brigantine and a 118-ton brig used in the fishery, and a 46-ton
vessel employed in transporting passengers to Newfoundland as well as
in fishing occasionally on the Grand Banks. Samuel rose quickly to
the rank of ship’s captain and by 1794 he was acting as agent in St
John’s for Daniel Codner and Company.
After
his father’s death in 1799, the firm continued as Daniel Codner and
Company until Samuel’s mother died in 1811. At that time the
administration of the estate and the management of the firm fell to
Samuel, who returned to England where he was to set up his permanent
residence. His sea captains and various partners, including Robert
Alsop of Newton Abbot, England, and William Bond, assumed direction
of the company in Newfoundland. For the next eight years the firm was
variously styled Samuel Codner and Company and Codner, Alsop and
Company, with some of Samuel’s relatives and colleagues such as
Alsop as principal shareholders. In 1819, however, Codner began to
conduct trade on his own account, initially from Teignmouth and then,
after 1828, from Dartmouth.
The
early stages of Codner’s career had been marked by extreme
fluctuations in trade. The price of cod, which had collapsed in
1790–92, recovered somewhat during the French revolutionary wars, a
period when Codner made two significant adjustments in his
Newfoundland ventures. First, he followed the lead of several other
prominent firms, such as John Slade and Company and Noble and Pinson,
by setting up a fishery on the Labrador coast and, secondly, he took
advantage of the increasing resident population of Newfoundland by
becoming a major importer of provisions, clothing, and fishing gear.
Despite various set-backs, such as the loss of nine ocean-going
vessels between 1806 and 1815, Codner sustained his interest in
Newfoundland trade, including the cod and salmon fishery in Labrador,
until 1844. From 1815 to 1844 his main commercial activities were
centred in St John’s from whence his ships carried salt fish to
Spain, Portugal, and the West Indies, and brought salt and coal from
England and wheat, bread, and biscuits from Germany. From the 1820s,
however, Codner specialized in importing “Bridport goods,”
sailcloth, ropes, nets, and twines from west Dorset, and cloth goods
from Devon. While building this lucrative business in St John’s,
Codner retained his share of the Teignmouth coastal trade.
Even
though Codner’s firm was one of St John’s leading mercantile
establishments for more than three decades, he made his mark in
Newfoundland history by founding the Newfoundland School Society, an
institution which had a profound effect on the island’s educational
and cultural development. Undoubtedly his experience as a resident of
St John’s from 1801 to 1811 gave Codner a clear understanding of
the need for schools and cultural institutions; in 1804 he had
contributed to the support of the St John’s Charity School. Apart
from the charity schools, and a few establishments supported by the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in some of the larger out
ports, the growing number of resident islanders had no opportunity to
acquire the rudiments of a formal education. An explanation for
Codner’s interest in promoting schools in Newfoundland comes from a
story about an experience he had in crossing the Atlantic to England:
his ship encountered a violent storm and Codner is said to have vowed
to devote himself to humanitarian work if he were safely delivered.
Certainly religious conviction played a part. He was a supporter of
the evangelical movement within the Church of England and was a
member of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Another explanation
of his concern for schools has it that at a meeting of the bible
society in London in 1822 he was inspired by an address by Lord
Liverpool, the prime minister, who reminded his audience of its
obligation to circulate the Scriptures among Britain’s “extensive
colonies and foreign possessions.”
Codner
immediately set about organizing support and collecting subscriptions
for schools in Newfoundland and over the next few years exerted
unflagging energy to establish and diffuse the school movement. He
circulated a leaflet entitled Schools
in Newfoundland,
which asserted that a large proportion of the 70,000 inhabitants were
without access to instruction. He gained the support of several
prominent merchants in the England–Newfoundland trade, including
Marmaduke Hart, as well as of evangelicals within the Church of
England.
In
1823 Codner set up a provisional committee and issued a prospectus
which stressed the strategic and commercial importance of
Newfoundland to British interests and at the same time deplored the
lack of moral culture among its inhabitants. Liverpool approved the
objectives of the proposed Newfoundland Society for Educating the
Poor at an inaugural meeting in London on 30 June and agreed to act
as vice-patron. The colonial secretary, Lord Bathurst, became
president, with Codner taking the office of secretary. Codner
immediately petitioned the British government for land grants for
buildings, free passage on naval ships for teachers, and assistance
from the government in St John’s for the construction of
schoolhouses. Despite the opposition of Newfoundland’s governor,
Sir Charles Hamilton, who held that the level of education provided
by the charity and SPG schools was adequate and also maintained that
the low church evangelicals were sectarian enemies operating within
the Church of England, the requests were granted. In 1824 the British
government gave £500 for the construction of a central school in St
John’s and £100 for the salary of a schoolmaster. Codner then made
a second circuit of the most important towns and cities in England,
Ireland, and Scotland, evidently at his own expense, to solicit both
donations and the assistance of political and ecclesiastical leaders
in founding branch societies. Through private subscription in 1825–26
he raised £1,871, and secured the patronage of such persons as Sir
John Gladstone in Liverpool and the archbishop of Dublin.
After
his association with the school society during its formative years,
Codner’s participation is difficult to assess. He held the office
of honorary secretary until the 1830s, by which time the movement was
well established. Apparently he did not visit Newfoundland in
connection with the society but rather confined his efforts to the
British Isles. Nevertheless, his business agent in St John’s,
William Bond, acted on his behalf and Codner himself maintained a
personal interest in the society until his death.
The
first school opened in St John’s in September 1824 with an
enrolment of 75. Two years later it had moved to a larger building to
accommodate 450 students. By 1829 eight principal schools, located in
the larger settlements, were in operation; they were staffed by
society teachers, recruited and trained in England. There were also
15 branch schools in smaller communities. Following the principles of
the Bell or Madras systems, the classes were conducted by monitors
who were directed by teachers in the principal schools. By 1836 the
society had expanded into most of the main settlements. Its 46
schools were located as far north as Twillingate, along the south
coast, and up the west shore to St George’s Bay. The society
claimed to have provided instruction for approximately 16,500
students, both children and adults, which equalled slightly less than
25 per cent of the total population.
Commonly
known as the Newfoundland School Society, the organization underwent
several official name changes through the years; when first
established it was known as the Newfoundland Society for Educating
the Poor (1823), then the Newfoundland and British North America
Society for the Education of the Poor (1829), the Church of England
Society of the Poor of Newfoundland and the Colonies (1846), the
Colonial Church and School Society (1851), and the Colonial and
Continental Society (1861). The latter name was retained until 1958
when the organization became known throughout the world as the
Commonwealth and Continental Church Society.
Although
originally interdenominational, the schools run by the Newfoundland
School Society became increasingly identified with the Church of
England, and in 1923 they were merged into a denominational school
system known as the Church of England schools. The existence of the
society, indeed, was one of the influences in the evolution of a
denominational school system in Newfoundland. The teachers sent out
in the society’s early years were well trained and highly regarded
as leaders within the communities in which they lived, and they
usually served as catechists or lay readers as well. A considerable
number later elected to become ordained as Anglican priests and
furnished the Newfoundland church with one of its main sources of
clerics during the 19th century. Regarding themselves as missionaries
as well as pedagogues, they strove to inculcate the virtues of hard
work, regular habits, sobriety, and the observance of Sunday as a day
of rest.
Codner
certainly possessed some personal qualities which helped ensure the
success of the movement. He was clearly a persuasive speaker and a
good organizer, and he held strong convictions. He was also a highly
respected member of both the mercantile community and the Church of
England evangelicals, and thus was well placed to gain support from
both groups. Codner was able to sway the merchants by arguing that a
more literate population in Newfoundland would also be a more moral
population. Merchants, like himself, who did not reside in
Newfoundland but conducted trade through agents, would then have less
need to fear for the safety of their property from “fraudulent and
improper practices.”
The
idea of social control through education was equally palatable to the
evangelicals and the British government. To the evangelicals,
Newfoundland was, or was about to become, one of the heathen areas
needing conversion and redemption, and the British government was
forced to face the fact that by the 1820s it could no longer be
regarded as a transient station for British fishermen. Indeed, the
government had already committed itself to some improvements, and the
support of schools aimed at making the indigenous population
“industrious” and “moral” complemented their policy of
cautious reform [see
Sir Richard Goodwin Keats. In this respect Codner’s school
movement can be seen as one of a series of reforms which led to the
granting of colonial status and representative government to
Newfoundland in 1832.
On
6 Dec.1820 Codner had married Selina Cave Browne, daughter of John
Cave Browne of Stretton, England. The social connections of his
spouse probably aided the school mission project he would begin two
years later. When he retired from the Newfoundland trade in 1844 at
the age of nearly 70, he sold his St John’s premises to the firm of
Wilson and Meynell. Codner died in Dartmouth and was interred in St
Petrox Church. A memorial erected there in his honour bears the
inscription: “Newfoundland Merchant who in 1823 founded the Society
which became the Colonial and Continental Church Society.”
Was
Codner a “self-sacrificing, humanitarian” as Frederick William
Rowe describes him, or was he an agent of cultural imperialists,
acting on behalf of the vested interests of the groups who promoted
the school movement, as he has been portrayed by Phillip McCann? If
the former, he stands in marked contrast to the mercantile community,
which has been represented as the root of every evil afflicting
Newfoundland’s development and the main obstacle to every cultural
improvement. If he was indeed elected by fate and circumstances to
instigate social reform, he must be regarded as a wise choice and as
an individual who promoted positive change in Newfoundland’s
social, cultural, and educational life.
