In the Valley

Four miles to the south of us, at the innermost section of the Valley district, was Dad’s old home. There his parents, Maurice O’Shea and wife Catherine O’Connell, by hard work succeeded in building up a well-arranged farmstead with abundant acres of quality forest reserved. A few of the children died in infancy and John Andrew passed away at eighteen. While reasonably young Dad moved away to work both on and off the Island. His father died in 1913, probably of cancer. As he lay gravely ill he Wrote to Dad who was then in Boston and asked him to come home. He came right away and the night he arrived the two chatted late about many things. The next day Maurice died. The Widow Catherine lived until 1952 to the age of 94. We all referred to her as grandma with the accent on the “ma”. She was friendly but stern and we the grandchildren took no chances in her presence either by bad words or misdeeds. She dressed in ankle-length attire of the old styles and had considerable in- fluence in the day-to-day running of things. She had a distin- glIiShed pioneer face and as long as I knew her she was bent over from years of hard work. Yet she possessed all her faculties and almost to the very end she assisted in the house and around the yard.

The Valley family through hard work and frugal living was Comfortably well off with better than average wagons and sleighs, farming implements and horse power. Buying things on credit was for them simply out of the question as a mark of dishonor. In 1929 they made a noteworthy splash for their day