Well I am vexed. I have just endeavored to re do old research to try to find our Richard Keeffe.
Something somewhere has to be wrong.
Irish records are not that bad. Especially for Cork City.
I have looked at all Richard Keeffe marriages at St Finbarrs. All children born to Richard Keeffes.
At all John Keeffe's births.
Somewhere somehow there has to be connection.
I traced Matthew/Matthias Keeffe of Cork. There were two. One was a doctor and one was a noted Engineer, who apparently travelled in the UK and then settled back in Cork. He was also a teacher.
The engineer came to England and is the Census for 1891 I think. He came and he was married then to a much younger woman. They had one child born in Lambeth and this child went to be a nun of Notre Dame.
Hmm.
But I cannot find his birth etc.
I have contacted Irish groups for the parish of Ballymacoda and Ladybridge where there was a John Keeffe born to a Richard and Norry Keeffe in 1838. There was a corn mill in Ballymacoda. A marriage for a Richard Keeffe and Honora Buckley in Cork City in 1821. But the researcher there suggested John Keeffe born in Cork City in 1822. That seems too early for our ancestor.
Anyway. Vexed here.
One record for a Richard Keeffe, marriage or parent must be our ancestor. But which?

Hi Clare, yes it is most frustrating.  I have collected lots of info on Richard O'keefe's (& variant surnames), built trees on Ancestry for various O'keefe families, had our O'Keefe YDNA tested, searched for autosomal DNA links in ireland, but still nothing that we can say is our Richard or John in Ireland.  As you know I thought the Richard O'keefe and Mary Callaghan couple having children in Cork was them, though their John was baptised 1828, but found that the 1828 John was recorded in other records.  These are the families I have explored via creating trees:

O'keefe Rathmines Family Tree

O'keeffe in Youghal Family Tree

Peter O'Keefe 1810 Waterford -1887 Staffs UK

Richard O'Keefe = Ellen Callaghan, family in Cork c.1828

Richard O'Keefe = Mary Sullivan family Cork

I have just created a tree to put on all the found Johns and Richards of about the right age who aren't in one of the other trees. This can gradually be built up and maybe used to eliminate various John's born in Ireland about the right time.  Hardly anyone on this tree yet - but did find a John Keefe, shipwright born Cork on the vessel Encounter in Japan in 1861.  

Just seen this - I have been so busy tonight with the Nurserymen of Dublin/Meath Michae
l and Christopher. Christopher is resident of Rathfarnham. And in Rathfarnham we find a Richard Keefe. Thinking on it. A shipwright is good. But our John was in Egton in 1861.