Sarah O'Sullivan

from a website about Galway / mayo grave inscriptions- http://www.iancantwell.com/MethodologyGraveyard.pdf - "Inchagoill Island, Lough Corrib. While this is not strictly within the area of reference I quote from Francis J. Biggar who published two memorials in J.P.M.D., 1895, vol. 3, pp. 76-7: 1) Cave ne me tangas/ Pray for the soul of Patrick/ O’Sullivan who died in April 1849/ aged 55 years/ Erected by his son John 2) Cave ne me tangas/ Pray for the soul of Sarah/ O’Sullivan who died 26 May 1884/ aged 37 years/ Erected by her husband Bernard O’Sullivan

See also http://www.clifden2012.org/history/historical-guides/item/92-evans-... :

Sarah O' Sullivan, nee Joyce

When I was a young boy my father would bring my brothers and I to Inchagoill on Lough Corrib, each year in early August, to attend mass and pray that we would not drown during the following year. This was probably wise as we were wild young lads, living within 100 metres of the lake, with access to boats at a time when lifejackets were unknown. On one of these pilgrimages I noticed three headstones in the graveyard with the name O'Sullivan. One in particular, the middle one, attracted my attention. Sarah O'Sullivan died in 1884, aged 37. I asked my father who she was.

He said she was his grandmother, Sarah Joyce, and she had died giving birth to his father, Bernard, and his twin brother, John. On her death, Sarah's husband, also Bernard, was left with their 9 remaining children; the oldest Michael was 15. Bernard was farming 26 acres, half of which was bog, yet he erected a headstone to commemorate his wife at a time when headstones were rare. She was obviously special and although I was curious, my father could tell me no more about her.

I found a marriage registration in Galway for Bernard Sullivan and Sarah Joyce. They married in Kilmilkin church, in the Maam valley, in 1866. Sarah's father was Tobias Joyce of Culliagh, near Leenane. Tobias turned out to be the second son of Big Jack Joyce, "King of the Joyces", and one-time proprietor of what is now the Leenane Hotel. He had often been written about by the travel writers in the 1830s.