Josephine Morrissey was the last survivor of 11 children born to John Byrne and Annie Murphy oflona, and one ofonly two Irish Catholics in this book.

Throughout her 103 years, she maintained a passion for cards and a keen ear for a good story. She lived in the Vernon home of her daughter

Rita Sullivan, one of six children from her marriage to Earnsclifle farmer Joe Morrissey. Mr. Morrissey died in 1926.

I can remember when I was three years old because my sister was born

and my father took me and an older sister up to the barn to rest in a stall where there was all newly fresh straw. They wanted to keep the house quiet because Father was up all night before.

Eleven, and I’m the last one. I had five sisters and five brothers. And strange, there ’s five of them buried in Iona and there’ 8 five buried in Maine in the same cemetery. And I’ll be the only one buried in Vernon River.

My grandfather on the Byme side came from Ireland. And my grand— mother came from Ireland. One was John Byme and the other was Catherine Wallace. They first came over to Newfoundland and then after a while they came to the Island. My grandmother, Catherine Wallace, she used to go down, and there was a Buchanan man down there, not far from the [Presbyterian] church. He’d go up and talk with her and she’d talk with him. They could talk in the Gaelic. See, the Gaelic is the Irish and the Scotch, the old stuff. And the minister, there was a minister — was it Sinclair?1 Grandmother could talk with him, this Gaelic.

1. Rev. Alexander Maclean Sinclair. Presbyterian minister in Belfast 1888-1906; Gaelic poet and scholar, collector of local Gaelic poems.

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