Circumstantial evidence.

Knock Mills.
There are some mills associated with O'Keefe.
Rathronan - here a Richard Keeffe died about 1850. I believe his wife was called Ellen although I don't remember why. This family is connected to the Yelverton mob and were having a bit of a do over this Will. I kind of discount this mill now.

Rathangan Kildare - this was pre 1800 and the family were petitioning the Duke of Wellington after soldiers stationed at the mill took all the stock or something. But I can't find any descendants although there are Keefe's around. Daniel I think.

Barllyartella. This was a Patrick I think - around about 1850 he was having an angry match with someone in the press, then immigrated. I think he was in debt. Etc. Loss of wife and children in a shipwreck on the way to Australia.

Ballyquane - Sherlock and Helen Keeffe marriage. I have googled around it. It ends up in the Landed Estate Courts. It does not seem to get anywhere.

St Dominic's Mill in Cork City. A distillery . It is Keeffe O'Keeffe and John O'Keeffe and I think it ends badly.

Also another down in the south somewhere I forget the details.

Oh and David Keeffe in Youghal making earthenware and dealing in coal and ships.

Rathmolyon Richard Keefe

Kill Mill somewhere like that. This and the above are in Meath.

Knock Mills Iffernock Clearly connected with Richard Keeffes. I have been researching this family.  I want to know all about them. Particularly because Nock Mills or whatever it is called, is in Trim. Also Trim (and Dublin) we have Michael and Christopher O'Keeffe with their plant nursery in Trim. And I've mislaid all the notes I made.

Recently I took a look at Matthias O'Keeffe. He's interesting. See below. But I digress. We should adopt Matthias though. If we could choose then that it what we should do.

So was Richard Keeffe miller baptised at St Finbarr's ? We hope so. I want this one Richard Keeffe 1804 parents John Keeffe and Ansty Barry/Berry. John and Anstace live near and around Gill Abbey Street which is near the river in Cork. They had a few other children too. Mainly Mary, Daniel and Johanna. Jolly good. I  want the Richard Keeffe of about that birth date to get married at St. Finbarr's. I am choosing this one. Richard Keeffe and Honora Buckley of St Brongs. I am choosing this marriage for a reason. I want the random birth of a John O'Keeffe around about 1834 ish in Cork to a father Richard - and I like this one best. John Keeffe 1838 to Richard and Norry Keeffe Ballymacoda and Ladysbridge. Just cos. Because Buckley is the kind of name you get with Milling families. That and Sherlock (posh) Sullivan, Barry and so on.

So back to facts. Now I need a Honoria Keeffe death. Sadly. So I looked at Wills first. There are not many in Cork so I widened it. I found one in Trim. A Will. Death of Richard Keeffe. That might be one of the three Richard Keeffe's that are connected with various Meath mills but it is a bit of a co incidence.

The Nock Mills ROK has a good background for me. He is politically active around 1840s with Irish rights problems. Gives money to this and that cause. We can have him.

Of course it does not work quite right. This is because of funeral monuments in Trim that give more detail about a Richard Keeffe who indeed had a father John but his mother was called Mary. Anyway. I still want to adopt them. I like too the next generation where a Richard Keeffe married Alicia Maria Synnott in Dublin. She died in 1885 in Summerhill Wexford. Ferns. And also there are a little nest of O'Keeffe's back in Waterford, O'Keeffe and Co. William Joseph who is the son of Richard Keeffe of Nock Mills. So a big connection with this family to Wexford and William Joseph thinks he was born there and not in Meath.

So is there an Ansty Keeffe death in Waterford or Wexford? Astace Barry was born in 1777 - there is a maybe death in Dungarvan in 1872. Hmm.

What there is from all this is a picture of mobility and connection between the O'Keeffe's of Trim and Wexford maybe also Waterford. It would be nice if our ancestors in Cork had had some land and not been millers. Farmers are so much easier to find. I am sticking for the moment to this Honoria O'Keeffe. She'll do for now.

Engineer and architect, of Cork and London. Mathias O'Keeffe, who was born in Cork circa 1830,(1)  was articled in 1850 to PETER JOSEPH KLASEN  , a district engineer in the Board of Works. He then worked on various engineering projects in England, Ireland and Scotland, before settling in Cork in about 1859.(2) He remained in Cork until at least 1880, when he held the position of city engineer and surveyor,(3) but by 1887 had moved to Brixton in London.(4) The English census of 1891 shows him as a sixty-one year old civil engineer and architect living at 13 Villa Road, Brixton, with his thirty-three year old Cork-born wife, Margaret, and two-year-old daughter, Mary.

A survey drawing by O'Keeffe, signed, addressed and dated 23 November 1876, showing the plan and section of the route for a proposed viaduct from Cobh cathedral over Middleton Street and West Street to the Crescent is among the Ashlin and Coleman drawings in the Irish Architectural Archive.(5)

What is interesting too is that his only child Mary O'Keeffe seems to have joined the Notre Dame order in Wandsworth and is a teacher there.