Quinton

The Quinton name In Newfoundland is rooted in Bonavista Bay where our Wessex ancestors came as migratory fishermen. By the mid 1700s James Quinton was a prominent planter (settler) in Bonavista while other Quintons, my crowd, were building their fishing rooms further up the bay at Red Cliff Island. These families may have been related as both had ties with Ringwood in Hampshire. Other early Quintons in the historical record include William Quinton fishing for Slades out of Battle Harbour, a Captain Quinton who sailed to and from England many times in the Montague and a John Quinton (possibly my ancestor) who was severely wounded by a Beothuk arrow during an ambush on Fogo Island in 1783.

The Quinton name has long vanished from Ringwood. Perhaps they all came to Newfoundland. The name is still common though further up the Avon River particularly in Downton, Woodgrove and Braemare. In these places too, the highly unusual use of Jolliffe as a Christian name among the Quintons appears frequently in Church records back through the 17th & 18th centuries in England, and has been continued here in Newfoundland through every Quinton generation from the first to the present.

— David Quinton, Vice President of the Wessex Society