The Barry,  McKeon, and Casey names are very common in the census data previous to 1870.  Some possibilities which may connect to our family are:

James Edward McKeown was born 24 April 1865 and baptized 7 May 1865 at St. Brigid's Church, on Avenue B between 7th and 8th street.  His parents were John McKeon and Mary Carney.  His sponsors were Patrick Sherry and Bridget McDogall.

William Barry New York City 1840 census,  includes five children, husband and wife both between 20 and 30, with three girls less than 5 years old.

James McKeon,1870 census,  laborer, age 49, born in Ireland, as was his 42 year old wife.  All their children born in NYC:  Bridget 17, John 15, James 12, Peter 10, Patrick 7, and Mary 5.

John McKeon, 13th ward 1840 census.  Household held one male between 15 and 20, one between 30 and 40, and one between 50 and 60.  Also held two females below age of 5, one between 5 and 10, one between 20 and 30, and one between 40 and 50.

James Barry in 1880 census, age 26, born NY of Irish parents; his wife Annie, age 24, born in Massachusetts of Irish parents; and a son, Jeremiah Cronin, born in Mass of Irish parents.  This Barry lived on Third Avenue and might be the eldest son of William Barry and Catherine Miskiel.

John McKeon, 916 Eighth Avenue, New York, 1880 census, sailor, age 46, born in Ireland.  His wife Susan, age 45, also born in Ireland.  All their children were born in New York:  Catherine, age 20; Ledwina, age 18; Susan, age 16; Emily, age 10, and John, age 6.

John McKeon, 323 East 21st Street, New York, car conductor, age 33, born in Ireland;  his wife, Annie, age 30, also born in Ireland; Stephen 3, and James 10/12 born in New York.

John McKeon, 129 Christopher Street, New York, driver of ice wagon, age 35, born in Ireland; wife Lizzie, age 30, born in England of English parents;  all children born in New York: James, age 8; John age 6; Mary, age 3, and Catherine age 2.

William Sherry, Spring Street in 1880 census, age 46, longshoreman, born Ireland;  Wife Mary age 44, born New Brunswick, daughter Marya, age 17, bookkeeper, born New Brunswick.

Early Geography of New York City Area

Our best information indicates that the McKeons, Barrys and Sherrys came to the United States in the 1840s or 1850s about the time of The Great Hunger in Ireland. The first known address is   406 Broome Street, one block above Canal Street and a little north of the notorious slum known as Five Points. It is likely that the earliest family members landed directly in Manhattan or came through Castle Garden and stayed for some time in Five Points, then relocated to Broome Street when some or other of them gained employment.

John McKeon purchased a burial plot in Calvary Cemetery, Queens NY in 1852, but the first recorded burial was for James McKeon in 1858. James McKeon purchased a similar plot in 1861, clearly for burial of Mary Dwyer and Bridget McKeon. From Broome Street, the family branched out to other parts of the New York / New Jersey area known as metropolitan New York.

Brooklyn developed in the 17th and 18th centuries as a transit place for the farm goods grown on Long Island and destined for Manhattan. Fulton Street, still a major thoroughfare, was the path from eastern Long Island to a place directly opposite lower Manhattan, to which goods were shipped by ferries powered by sailboats. When Robert Fulton established a steam powered ferry in 1814, Brooklyn became the haven for the upper class, who could daily leave crowded Manhattan for elegant brownstone homes, such as those which still exist in areas like Brooklyn Heights. When the Brooklyn Bridge was completed in 1880, middle class persons could now walk to work in Manhattan, and Brooklyn experienced a great increase in lower middle class migration. Brooklyn absorbed other nearby districts, such as Greenpoint and Williamsburg. In turn, Brooklyn was annexed into New York City in 1898. After the subway tunnels were completed in 1910, the further extents of Brooklyn became a bedroom community.

Queens developed a little more slowly, remaining farmland until late in the nineteenth century.

About the time of the Civil War, an enterprising developer purchased farmland directly across from 34th Street and began building houses.  This area, just north of Newtown Creek, became known as Hunters Point.  A ferry from 34th Street made the connection to Manhattan, and many Irish and German families relocated out of Manhattan.  Several of the local areas were linked together to be called Long Island City, although it was never incorporated as a city.   The McKeons and Sherry families moved to Newtown.  In 1971, James Sherry was killed in a railroad accident near Devils Kills, a channel connected to Newtown Creek.  He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, probably by ferry.  Thomas McKeon began his commercial career as a wood turner, like his father and uncle before him.  Perhaps they worked for Steinway Piano, which had organized its factory in Long Island City in 1853.  He later became a fireman and then fire captain in Maspeth, and located his family in Elmhurst, Queens.   Hunters Point  is now  the second stop on the IRT Flushing line after it crosses the East River and before reaching Queens Plaza.  The Kennevan family located in Greenpoint, an area of Brooklyn just south of Newtown Creek.

The completion of the 59th Street bridge tied Queens into the industrial life of the growing commercial center of Manhattan. The advent of the subway tunnels around 1915 transformed Queens into a haven for middle and lower middle class citizens, such as Patrick Foy, who settled in Corona, one block from the elevated line which took him to work as a policeman in Manhattan.. Like Brooklyn, Queens had absorbed smaller communities, such as Corona, Whitestone, Maspeth, Newtown and Elmhurst into a single municipality; it too was annexed by New York City in 1898.

After World War II, the Queens Midtown Tunnel was completed, running through Hunters Point and connected to the Long Island Expressway.  I believe that some of the housing used by the McKeon families was taken to make room for the toll booth connection.  This new route into Manhattan completed Long Island City's conversion from living space to warehouse and small factory space, all servicing Manhattan.    Recently there has been some attempt to maintain and upgrade some of the little housing sections remaining from the nineteenth century, and Dutch Kills has developed a reputation for fine restaurants.

The Bronx remained rural until the arrival of the subways at the turn of the 20th century.  It then saw large numbers of transfers from Manhattan, including the Mullins,  Peter Foy, Sherry, and Witt. (The Sherry family also moved to Yonkers, but directly across McLean Avenue, which is the division line between the Bronx and Yonkers.

Pat Casey Croghan remembers her father telling her that he lived in Hells Kitchen, so it seems that Elizabeth Barry Casey and her husband and family lived there before moving across the river to Hoboken. Her father also told her that the Barrys were connected with the Circle Line. Since William Barry was a sea sawyer who emigrated from Cork,    the connection seems likely.  Whether William Barry received his  training in Cork, the principal seaport of Ireland, or in the USA is not known.

Hell's Kitchen is the area between 34th and 59th Streets, from 8th Avenue to the Hudson River. Back in the 17th Century, when the Dutch first arrived in New York, they found on what is now the midtown's west side an idyllic, pastoral area of freshwater streams and grassy meadows. They called the region Bloemendael, for "Vale of Flowers." Many decades later, in 1851, the Hudson River Railroad set up a station at the future site of 30th Street and 10th Avenue, initiating major change. Immigrants to America, mostly Irish (fleeing the Great Potato Famine) and Germans soon flooded the area and went to work in the railroad yards. With the burgeoning of industry in New York at mid-century, they were the workers in West Side breweries, factories, slaughterhouses, warehouses, brickyards and on the docks. 

By the start of the Civil War, the population of Hell's Kitchen soared to over 350,000, and that population was housed primarily in rows of tenements that were hastily erected amid the factories and slaughterhouses.  Most residents, in fact, walked to work. The neighborhood slaughterhouses emitted such a stench that 39th Street was nicknamed Abattoir Place. 

During the 1863 New York draft riots protesting the new Conscription Act, there were three days of chaos in the streets of Hell's Kitchen. During the Civil War, a rich man could buy a substitute to serve in his place for $300.. When the newspapers printed the names of everyone who had been chosen in the lottery, there was a great deal of resentment. The first name on the list was a man who lived on the corner of West 46th Street and 10th Avenue. The rioters ravaged the railways in this district. The neighborhood people joined in and suffered terrible losses, resulting in mass burials along 11th Avenue. The rioters attacked African-American men, killing three in the area and leaving 70 missing. The number of men killed in the riots may never be known, but estimates range from 2,000 to 20,000. Another 8,000 were wounded and $5 million in property damage was done. 

After the Civil War, thousands of homeless children became street urchins, who in turn evolved into the nucleus of the first neighborhood gangs. The 19th Street Gang, led by Dutch Heinrichs, was one of the most notorious gangs. They would be followed by the Gophers and the Dead Rabbits (the name "dead" back then was equivalent to today's "bad.") Gang members typically lived in the squalid tenements west of 7th Avenue in the 20s and 30s, close to the infamous Tenderloin District.  

By the 1880s, 36th Street to 59th Street west of 9th Avenue was a seething mix of tenements and factories. In 1879 a new city ordinance mandated an improved tenement design incorporating airshafts on each side of a building, giving it a dumbbell shape. These "dumbbell tenements," also known as New Law Tenements, were meant to provide air and light, but the airshafts were often used as dumping grounds for garbage. These tenements embodied the sordid nature of slum life, which was later exposed for all time by Jacob Riis in the 1890 classic tome, How The Other Half Lives. 

With the building of the elevated subway, known as the El, in 1879, the glamorous and modern New York met the Other Half. The El used the vestiges of the aqueduct  built in 1842  to carry Croton water to the city's receiving reservoir. The aqueduct was mainly built by African-Americans, who briefly lived in the neighborhood before moving north with the work to Harlem. Later, underground pipes replaced the aqueduct, whose old masonry served to harbor thugs and highwaymen. By 1870, when some 17,000 sailors were said to have been robbed in Hell's Kitchen, the neighborhood was one of the most notorious criminal enclaves in town, housing (as of 1881) 7,500 licensed grog shops, as well as many unlicensed ones. Hell's Kitchen soon became home to the worst criminals in New York, so much so that writer Herbert Asbury called it "the most dangerous area on the American continent." Police constables walked the streets here only in pairs. 

Where did the area get its name? The most common version traces it to the story of Dutch Fred The Cop, a veteran policeman, who with his rookie partner, was watching a small riot on West 39th Street near 10th Avenue. The rookie is supposed to have said, "This place is hell itself," to which Fred replied, "Hell's a mild climate. This is Hell's Kitchen." 

Hoboken  lies on the west bank of the Hudson River directly across from 42nd street. It became a community of the upper middle class who built elegant brownstones and commuted by ferry to New York City.  Geographically Hoboken is contained by the Palisades and two bays, so it never expanded. Before World War I, Hoboken was the destination of German freighters and passenger ships.  During World War I it became  a center for  ship repair, particularly for ships of British registry.  (When my father, a US soldier, was shipped to France, his group was taken from Long Island by ferry and carried to Hoboken, where they boarded an ocean liner.  They slept there overnight, then sailed for France.)   Maxwell House Coffee also maintained a large refinery for its coffee. The odor of coffee and the decline of shipping led to a rapid deterioration of Hoboken until the 1960s, when gentrification returned the brownstones to their original glory, but now peopled by 'yuppies' who work in the financial services, advertising, and communication industries of New York City.