CHAPTER THREE: 
     
    
   
   
    
     75%;..g 
     
    
   
   
    
     ollowing their marriage, John and Angelina moved into the 
     
    

    
     Keefe house with John’s parents, a common practice in those 
     
    

    
     days. John worked as a telegrapher and agent at the railway 
     
     station adjacent to the Keefe home, and operated the 185 acre farm 
     
    
   
   
    
     established by his grandfather. 
     
    
   
   
    
     It was a typical mixed farm of the time, which included potatoes, cows, 
     
     pigs, chickens, geese, horses and a large vegetable garden. Angelina was 
     
     the homemaker, looking after John’s elderly parents, doing the cooking, 
     
     cleaning, putting up preserves and performing the myriad of other tasks 
     
     associated with being a farm wife. She also made many beautiful quilts 
     
     and hooked rugs, and knitted socks, mittens and scarves. With her 
     
     training as a seamstress, she made — and mended — many of the 
     
    

    
     family’s clothes. 
     
    
   
   
    
     John’s father Patrick died in 1903 and his mother Ellen died three years 
     
     later. Meanwhile, Angelina’s father Ambrose, after his first wife Elizabeth 
     
     died, had remarried and went on to have a number of children from his 
     
     second marriage. Ambrose was an enterprising farmer and carpenter. He 
     
     built carriages, manufactured caskets and served as the local undertaker. 
     
     An inventor, he designed and built threshing machines which were widely 
     
     used by farmers on the Island up to the 1960s; some of the famous 
     
     “Monaghan threshers” were even exported to western Canada. 
     
    
   
   
    
     27