We regret to announce the death of Margaret Repetto (nee Lavarello) affectionately known by all on the island as Aunty Margie.

She was born in 1914 some months before the First World War. She was born during that period of thirteen years between 1909 and 1922 when the island was without a clergyman. (The Revd. Graham Barrow had left for Cape Town in 1909 and it wasn't until 1922 with the arrival of Revd. Rogers that another priest was appointed). In the Register of Births and Baptisms kept at the Rectory, it records that in the absence of a clergyman, Margaret Kathleen Lavarello was baptised by Robert Glass on the 24th May 1914.

Margie lived through a period of enormous change on Tristan: at the time of her birth there were only 111 people on the island; there were twenty-two families living in eighteen houses. She knew the island before the building of the Church, the School, and the Hospital: before the introduction of money, postage stamps, radio and television and the fishing Factory.

She was the youngest daughter of Gaetano and Jane Lavarello (nee Glass) and was the last surviving child of one of the two original male Italian settlers that arrived at Tristan in 1892. She married Johnnie Repetto, and had three children. Margie was a deeply committed Christian and regular attendee of St. Mary's Church; she loved her hymns, prayers and Holy Communions which latterly took place in her home next to the Church. Her main interests in life were her Church, home and family; she will be greatly missed by her many friends and our deepest sympathies are extended to her devoted family who cared for her at home to the last.

She is survived by her children, Lindsay, Rose and Sylvia, seven grandchildren, and twelve great-grand-children.

Sarah Glass