| |
Keane
of Kilnamona
The Killeen Relations
 Bridget
Keane, eldest child and daughter of Matthew Keane and Margaret Sexton, Ballyashea,
Kilnamona was born in 1849. Bridget married
Thomas (Tom) Killeen (b. 1853), Ivyhill, Inch, County Clare
probably in
1879. They had six children, Patrick James (1880-1933), Matthew
(1881-1950), Mary (1883-1975), Margaret (1885- ), Bridget
(1888-1986) and Charles (1890-1948). Bridget died in 1923 aged 74
years and Thomas lived to 1936. Their eldest son Patrick became a
priest and a daughter (probably Bridget) joined the nuns, and known
as Sr Lawrence, both
serving in the US.
Matthew spent much of his youth in
Ballyshea helping his uncle with the farm work and the younger
cousins, then he went to America where we had a number of
labouring jobs on farms and the railway in the mid-west. It
is believed he lost an arm and ended his days in San Francisco,
where he remained single. Mary spent all her adult life from the
War of Independence onwards in Our Lady's Mental Hospital in Ennis,
after an incident with soldiers firing shots into the house in
Ivyhill. Margaret died as a child, she was baptised and census
records show that 5 of 6 children lived for Thomas Killeen and
Bridget Keane. Fr Patrick bought a ranch outside Santa Rosa,
California and he and Matthew tried to get Charles to join them,
this was lost with the 1929 crash.
Above: Thomas Killeen, circa 1934, then widower to Bridget Keane from Ballyashea, Kilnamona
Charles married Mary Casey and they had four in
family: Patrick Joseph (b. 1933); Marie Lousia (1934); Thomas
(1935); and Michael Matthew (1937). The name Matthew in the first
generation and Michael Matthew in the next is particularly
interesting as we know Bridget's father was Matthew - it was an old
Irish custom that the eldest boy in a family was named after the
paternal grandfather and the second eldest boy after the maternal
grandfather (the reverse case held for the eldest girls).
Two of the family entered religious orders,
Patrick James entered the priesthood and served among other places
in Fleetwood, MN, USA where he died in 1933 and
Bridget's entered the nuns in America with religious name of Sr.
Mary Lawrence.
  
Above from Left: Fr Patrick James (c. late
1920s/early 1930s); Sister Lawrence (c. 1950); and Charles Killeen
(c. 1934)
Charles's middle son Thomas (Tom) attended
secondary school at the Christian Brothers in Ennis in the early
1950s and was in the same class year as this webmaster. Tom in his
turn married Pauline McInerney in the mid-1960s and they had two
sons and a daughter. Tom died in 2006. I am beholden to their first born,
Patrick Martin (born 1966), for family photos and the
Killeen genealogy tree, cousins to the Ballyashea Keane's of
Kilnamona.
First published April, 2014 |
|