Historical Captain Joseph Barss home site explored

Published on November 5, 2008

Published on January 31, 2010

What could be the site of Captain Joseph Barss Sr.’s original home was explored on Oct. 26.

Five members of the Mersey Heritage Society measured and documented the site in a wooded area behind the Hank Snow Country Music Centre. “As an archeological site it was quite old. It was also intact in terms of it was abandoned and left undisturbed,” says society President Craig Chandler.

Barss Sr. was a successful privateer and with wife Elizabeth had 10 children, including Captain Joseph Barss Jr., Commander of the Liverpool Packet.

Barss Sr. was imprisoned in France during the 1780s for two years, during which he was thought to have died. Although his wife never gave up hope that he was still alive, the family nearly starved to death during those years. Barss Sr. did return, however, after escaping or bargaining his way out of prison, and returned to the sea to become very wealthy. He built a mansion in 1798, which still stands today and is part of Lane’s Privateer Inn.

Barss Sr. lived until he was in his late 80s, and is buried at the historical cemetery in Liverpool.

However there is no information on who owned the original home after Barss Sr., or what was done to the house. Railway maps from the late 1800s do not show the house, so society member Anne Langille believes the home was abandoned by then.

It was through research by Langille and Chandler that they found the location. There are three home foundations in the area, but they believe the one explored was Barss Sr.’s. “There was one reference from someone who grew up in the late 1800s that precisely mentioned with landmarks where that cellar was,” says Chandler.

The cellar site is about 25 square feet in size, and Langille thinks it could have been similar in style to the old Dexter’s Tavern building on Riverside Dr. by Fort Point.

There are no immediate plans to do any more work on the site, but testing is a possibility in order to properly date the location.

In the future, the group may do some archeology work on the site, but for now they are happy with what they found. “Our main goal was to formally identify that as an archeology site,” says Chandler.

The Mersey Heritage Society started in 1999, with the goals of doing small scale archeology and work at protecting heritage buildings in the Queens County Area. The group has about 20 active members, and has researched or looked at 12 sites in the county. They also have a website that documents what they do at www.mersey.ca.