The Parish Church of Wimborne Minster, Dorset has a enduring significance for the Bemister Family of Carbonear.It was on the 30th of May 1785, in the Minster - as it is locally known - that John Bemister married Mary Willis. John had been baptised there on the 13th of November, 1747.
It would be two of the three sons that John & Mary raised at nearby Lambsgreen Farm - a location that is now a popular pub and eatery surrounded by farmland - that would eventually establish the family in Newfoundland as young lads. The first to accept an apprenticeship in the Newfoundland with a merchant was William Willis Bemister, when he was 14. His younger brother Edward Smith Bemister joined him and both became established in their own firm in Carbonear eventually.
The descendants of the Bemisters of Carbonear are all related to one of these two men.
Wimborne Minster has served as a place of workship for centuries, in fact the history predating the current Norman structure dates to its foundation by Cuthburga, sister of Ine, King of the West Saxons in 718.
In 871 Alfred the Great buried his older brother King Ethelred I of England, in the minster.
An historical overview is now available of one of the early stages of the Minster when it operated as the Collegiate Church of Wimborne Minster.
