The surname O’Keeffe was a common one throughout the County

of Cork. (Translated, the name means kind or gentle.) The name was derived from an Irish clan called O’Caoimb over 1000 years ago. The family can trace its roots to Felim, who ruled as King of Munster, an ancient province located in south—west Ireland, in 52 B.C. The spelling and pronunciation gradually changed to O’Keeffe between the Anglo— Norman invasion of the 12th century and the English and Scottish migration in the 16th century.

After the Norman invasion, the families settled into an area called Pobal O’Keeffe in the north of Cork, near the present day border with Kerry. The main branch of the family lived in Dromagh in the

Dromtarriff parish.

The last chiefs of the clan were Domhnall O’Keeffe who was prominent in the Catholic rebellion of the 1640s and his son Daniel who was killed fighting for King James II at the Battle of Aughrim in 1691. Their last remaining castle, Dromagh Castle, was surrendered in 1653. The family estates were confiscated by the British in 1703.

Ireland was ruled by Britain since the 1300s. Britain — English and Protestant — denied many basic rights to Irish Catholics, which led

to generations of strife. Land was seized and given to settlers loyal to England. By the early 1700s, approximately 90 percent of the land was owned by Protestant noblemen to whom the Catholic peasants paid rent. The Catholic church was repressed. Under rigourous and highly restrictive penal laws, Catholics were prevented from owning land, their rights to education were limited and they were not allowed to vote or hold public office. Poverty and deprivation were widespread.

In order to escape poverty, oppression and lack of opportunity, many of the Irish people emigrated — to the United States, Canada, Australia and many other destinations around the world. The wave of emigration peaked during the great Irish famine of 1845—47 when the potato crop failed because of late blight, a fungal disease that devastated the primary source of food for Irish peasants. Many thousands died of starvation, typhus, scurvy and dysentery, and many thousands of others fled the country. Thousands more died in these so—called “coffin ships” that were

12 KATHLEEN MURPHY, MAITRIARC