Jessie Luther at the Grenfell Mission

Melvin Baker is an archivist and historian at Memorial University of
Newfoundland, and the co-editor of Dictionary of Newfoundland and
Labrador Biography.

A growing genre in Newfoundland studies is the edited letters and
diaries of those who visit Newfoundland for professional work reasons.
Annotated notes are invaluable in providing context for events and
individuals mentioned in these publications. The editor of Jessie Luther
at the Grenfell Mission provides the reader with strong endnotes and an
introduction that sets the context for Luther’s own edited diary-style
reminiscences. The result is a memoir mirror reflecting rural
Newfoundland and Labrador at the turn of the 20th century. But it is a
two-way mirror, telling us as much about the social morals and values of
Luther and the outsiders working for the medical mission Wilfred
Grenfell established at St. Anthony, Newfoundland, in 1900 as it does
about rural Newfoundlanders themselves.

Luther was a single 45-year-old American-born artist and crafts teacher
whom Grenfell persuaded to come to St. Anthony to establish a crafts
industry whereby local women would make mats for sale to help fund
Grenfell’s missionary work. Her account of her stay in Newfoundland
between 1906 and 1910 naturally includes accounts of Grenfell and his
medical personnel. One interesting theme running throughout the book is
the matter of getting around the isolated communities of Newfoundland
and to Labrador by coastal boat. There were few roads worth mentioning,
and Luther’s account contain many references to the wait for the sound
of the ship’s whistle and the arrival of the coastal boat—“a
social event and the only contact with the outside world.” Her account
of her 1910 trip to northern Labrador to visit the Moravian mission to
the Inuit also makes interesting reading and provides insights into the
intermingling of several cultural groups: German Moravian, Labrador
Inuit, and Luther’s own New England influence.