Chapter One

Patrick Morrissy and Mary Phelan

When Patrick Morrissy and Mary Phelan and their children arrived in New Brunswick in 1837 the family settled on Beaubear's Island near Miramichi. There was an active ship building industry on the island, the first ship launched from Davidson's shipyard on Beaubear's Island was the 300 ton "Miramichi". Patrick Morrissy was a tradesman, a saddler by profession. He was not a young man when he arrived, he may have been as old as fifty-five years of age and at least one of his sons was accompanied by his wife and young children. Patrick and Mary's children were in their late teens and early to mid-twenties. Patrick and Laurence, two of Patrick and Mary's sons, married soon after their arrival in New Brunswick. However, the family did not live for long on Beaubear's Island, within two years they bought land near Barnaby River and began farming.

Barnaby River is situated about ten miles south of Nelson-Miramichi. Perhaps the family moved from Beaubear's Island to the Barnaby River area early in 1838, a year after arriving in New Brunswick, as the ship building industry on Beaubear's Island was already declining and entered an economic depression in 1841. At this time, most Irish immigrants to Canada went into farming, and certainly free or inexpensive land in Canada was an incentive for coming here. The Morrissy homestead was in the Scemiwaggon River Ridge area near Barnaby River and Jane Morrissy Allan tells me that her brother Dick Morrissy still owns some acreage of the original homestead. By 1866, both Patrick and Mary had passed away and the homestead was occupied by their son John, who died unmarried in 1881 when he was seventy-five years old, and their daughter Mary who had been widowed around 1856 and had four grown children living in the area.

Patrick Morrissy and Mary Phelan had six children that we know of, all of whom were apparently born in Ireland. However, their great granddaughter, Lily McCabe of Montreal, writes in a 1956 letter to Kathleen ("Tally") Morrissy of Newcastle that they "came with sons & one daughter". William Morrissy informed me that the children's names are as follows: Catherine, Laurence, John, Patrick, Michael, and Mary. I do not have the birth dates for Catherine or for Michael, who may be the oldest. I also do not have any information regarding a possible seventh child of Patrick and Mary who is said to have stayed behind in Ireland when the family moved to Canada. There is also Richard Morrissy who will be discussed in the next chapter.

It is possible that Patrick and Mary were both born around 1785, assuming Patrick was around twenty-one years of age when their son John was born in 1806. We do not have the exact dates for when either Patrick and Mary were born or for when they died and curiously, we don't even know where Patrick is buried.

There is no known grave for Patrick Morrissy in the Miramichi area and because of this there is some confusion about his final years, but the following seems to me the most common version of his story. One of Patrick and Mary's sons returned to Ireland from New Brunswick, and although we have the names of six of their children we don't know this son's name, as all of the children we know of can be accounted for in the new world. Perhaps this was an older son who never came to Canada with the family; instead he stayed behind in Ireland. It is possible this son immigrated to Canada with the family but returned to Ireland sometime afterwards. Patrick Morrissy's wife Mary Phelan died sometime between 1840 and 1866 and it was this event that possibly led to Patrick returning to Ireland to visit this son.

Lily McCabe, in a letter written in 1956 (see Appendix Four), mentions what most of the family thought had happened to Patrick Morrissy: "One of the sons went back to the auld sod after a few years, our Progenitor Patrick went to visit this son after the death of his wife & died at home." It is possible that one of the sons returned to Ireland and was visited by his father who subsequently died, and then later on the son decided to return to Miramichi. If this was John Morrissy, it might account for his living with his widowed sister Mary back at the family's homestead at Barnaby River in 1886. If John Morrissy died in 1881 he would have been around seventy-five years old.

Another version of the family history says that Patrick died soon after arriving in Canada and this necessitated the family leaving Beaubear Island. Around 1840 they bought a homestead in the Barnaby River area and began farming; many Irish immigrants came to Canada because of the prospect of owning their own land. This version comes from a history of the Millae family in New Brunswick that was compiled by Dave Gilliard with the help of Edith (McWilliam) McAllister. Edith McAllister was the corresponding secretary of the Miramichi Historical Society and the great granddaughter of Catherine (Kate) Morrissy, for whom Laurence Morrissey was the baptismal sponsor.

Mary Phelan

We know that Mary Phelan was buried in the Newcastle area because we have her grandson William P. Morrissy's letter to his uncle Laurence Morrissey, in which William invites Laurence to return to Miramichi to visit his old home and visit "poor dear grandmother's grave", and here he is referring to Mary Phelan's grave (see Appendix One). It is most likely that Mary Phelan is buried at St. Patrick's Church in Nelson, not far from Newcastle. This is also the church where Laurence Morrissey married Johannah Meany.

We don't know much about Mary Phelan. We do know she was the mother of at least six children and she must have done a good job raising them, they all turned out law abiding and good citizens. She was married to Patrick Morrissy for at least thirty-five years. She moved to a new country and made a new life there for herself and her family. She faced physical hardship and discomfort homesteading in New Brunswick. She was remembered with fondness by her grandson William Morrissy, and most likely by her other grandchildren as well.

Some of Patrick and Mary's Grandchildren:

Next, I will go into greater detail regarding the descendants of Patrick and Mary's son Patrick Morrissy and his wife Rose Farrell, and also some of the children of Patrick and Rose. According to the 1861 census, Patrick Morrissy and Rose Farrell's two oldest daughters, Catherine, 21 and Mary, 17 worked as domestic servants. Their other children were all students at this time: William, 15; Patrick, 12; Ann, 10; John Veraker, 6; Jane, 5; and Edward, 3. The youngest son, Frank, was born in 1863. William Morrissy's importance for us is his 1866 letter to Laurence Morrissey (see Appendix One) with its abundance of detailed information on the family. There is no better single source of information from that time than that of William. William Morrissy was born in 1843 and died in 1898 in Brooklyn, New York, where he practised medicine. He had two children, John or Francis and Rosemary Morrissy. Below, I will discuss respectively Catherine, John Veraker, Frank, and Edward Morrissy.

Catherine Morrissy's Descendants

Catherine is the oldest child of Patrick and Rose, and the god-daughter of my great great grandfather, Laurence Morrissey. Catherine (born Newcastle, late December, 1839; died 1895) married Edward Millea on 3 February 1864 and they had six children including twins, Edward and William born in 1866, and Rose Ellen who was born in 1870. Rose Ellen Millea married George F. McWilliam on 11 January 1898 and they also had six children, including G. Roy McWilliam. Roy McWilliam (born Sydney, Nova Scotia, 1904; died, Ottawa, Ontario 1977) was a Member of Parliament in Ottawa from 1949 to 1968. Another of their children was Edith Margaret McWilliam (born Newcastle, 1909; died Newcastle, 1987). She married E. Feldman McAllister and they had five children. It was with Edith McAllister that my brother corresponded in the late 1970s regarding family history. She is the author of a short history of Newcastle and for her work as a librarian and the new library in Newcastle was dedicated to her in 1992.

The Honourable John V. Morrissy

A son of Patrick and Rose, John Veraker Morrissy (born Newcastle, New Brunswick, 13 August 1857; died Chatham, New Brunswick, 31 July 1924), married Joanna Dunn on 5 May 1879 in Dalhousie, New Brunswick. He owned a furniture and farm machinery store in Newcastle, which by 1918 had branches in Dalhousie and Caraquet. He was the President of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The AOH was begun as a secret organization in Sixteenth Century Ireland to keep alive the Catholic faith after the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I enacted penal laws that disenfranchised Catholics in Ireland.

As he became more established, John V. Morrissy entered politics and was elected an alderman in Newcastle on 23 August 1899. His wife, Mrs. John V. Morrissy was elected to the first board of trustees of the school in Newcastle in November 1899. As his ambition grew, John V. Morrissy turned his sight to provincial politics and served three terms (1903, 1908, and 1912) in the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick. The Morrissy Bridge (officially opened on 12 November 1914) connecting Newcastle and Chatham was his special project and is named after the Honourable John V. Morrissy who was Minister of Public Works in the New Brunswick government at that time. The Morrissy Bridge was built by Dominion Bridge Co. Limited of Lachine, Quebec and The Foundation Co. Limited of Montreal. It was this bridge that my grandmother, Edith Sweeney mentioned when she spoke of New Brunswick and that the family settled in New Brunswick when we first came to Canada.

John V. Morrissy ran unsuccessfully as a Liberal Party candidate in the federal elections of 1896, 1900, and 1917. He was finally elected a Member of Parliament for Northumberland, NB in the 1921 election and he and his wife moved to Ottawa.

The Honourable Charles J. Morrissy

Of John V. Morrissey's five children only Charles married; his wife was the former Ellen Hennessy. Charles Joseph Morrissy (born Newcastle, 18 January 1881; died Newcastle, 22 April 1932) followed his father into a political career. He served as Mayor of Newcastle for three years, then he was elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick in 1920, and as a Member of Parliament for Northumberland, NB in 1926. He was certainly following in his father's footsteps, and achieved much in his political career. He retired from politics in 1930 at the end of his first term in the House of Commons in Ottawa. He was only fifty-one years old when he died in 1932. Charles Morrissy and Ellen Hennessy had five children: Kathleen ("Tally"), Aileen, William, Francis, and John. Kathleen attended McGill University and was the first social worker in New Brunswick. Charles' son John Morrissy became a judge in New Brunswick and is the father of Bannon and William (both mentioned above), Kevin, Brendan, and Charles. John V. Morrissy and his son Charles are buried in the cemetery at St. Mary's Church in Newcastle.

Frank Morrissy Moves to Minnesota

Patrick and Rose's youngest child Francis ('Frank') Morrissy was born in Miramichi in 1863. Rose died when Frank was only five years old and Frank didn't marry until he was thirty-six. Frank Morrissy married Louise Holt at St. Patrick's Church in Montreal in 1899. They moved to St. Paul, Minnesota where Frank worked for a horse and buggy company. I understand that Louise Holt's family originally settled in Quarryville, a few miles from Miramichi, where they ran a post office, and that Louise was born in Chatham, New Brunswick. Frank and Louise had two sons, Hugh and John. Both sons majored in art at St. Thomas College and both became commercial artists. Frank provided very well for his family. His son Hugh Morrissy worked for the major department stores in St. Paul and later, when he was about forty years old, he started a detective agency. Frank and Louise's other son, John Morrissy worked for LIFE magazine from when it began publishing.

Frank Morrissy worked in the horse and buggy business until the automobile took over and his company switched to manufacturing car accessories. Frank and Louise died of cancer about a year apart, around 1926, both in a nursing home.

Edward Morrissy Moves to British Columbia

The Dictionary of Miramichi Biography states that Edward Morrissy (born Newcastle, 1858) "and his wife, Sarah [M] Campbell, a native of New Westminster, B.C., were separated in the late 1890s." Edward worked for a railroad laying track in Western Canada and Oregon in the United States. The marriage failed and Edward and Sarah's three sons, Francis, William, and Herbert were sent to live with relatives in New Brunswick. After a while the two older boys returned west to live with their mother, but Herbert stayed with his aunt Jane Morrissy Quinn, one of Edward's sisters.

Among circumstances working against the marriage was that Sarah Campbell was fourteen years younger than Edward Morrissy. Some time after the divorce Sarah Campbell remarried, to a Captain Riggs, and lived in Seattle, Washington. Jane Morrissy Allan tells me that her grandmother Sarah Campbell died in 1964 and that Jane received a diamond ring from Sarah's estate.

The son who didn't return to his mother in the United States was Jane's father, Dr. Herbert Morrissy (born Seattle, Washington, 25 May 1895), who was raised by and "lived with his aunt Jane (Morrissy) Quinn in Newcastle." Herbert Morrissy accomplished much: he earned a B.A. from St. Francis Xavier University in 1916; served overseas in World War One; studied at McGill University where he earned his M.D. in 1924; and studied at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbour where he specialized in pediatrics. He then returned to Newcastle where he practised medicine until his death on 18 December 1968.

Father Whelan, later Bishop Whelan (there was a Bishop Whelan High School in Montreal), performed the marriage ceremony of Dr. Herbert Morrissy and Mary (Calder) Duffy at St. Patrick's Church in Montreal in April 1938. They had four children: Paul (born 1939); Jane (born 1940); Richard (born 1942); and Kathleen (born 1943). The name I always heard referred to regarding my grandmother's visit to Newcastle was that of Dr. Herb Morrissy, who made such a lasting positive impression on my grandmother and other family members from Montreal who met him. Dr. Morrissy only met his mother again when he was sixty-five years old. Dr. Morrissy's father, Edward Morrissy lived the rest of his life in British Columbia. Edward died in Penticton, B.C., on 17 December 1940 at the age of eighty-one years.