The  McKeon  Family 

 
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Thomas and Anna McKeon and their children

Thomas McKeon (1862 -  1925) was born around Broome Street in Manhattan.  His father, John McKeon was born in Ireland and worked as a wood turner. The family moved to Newtown, Queens before 1870, long before Queens became a part of New York City in 1898..  After following his father's trade for a few years,  Thomas  became a fireman. By the time of his death in 1925,  he was a Fire Captain in Maspeth, the district next to Elmhurst, where the McKeon family had a house at 182 Glean Street. From the Casey family, I received a rough-hewn end table with neatly turned posts constructed by Thomas and given to Anna before their 1883  marriage. 

Anna Clarissa Wearing  (1865 - 1939) grew up in Manhattan, the daughter of an Irish mother (Mary Reidy of County Clare) and a father of English origin, George Wearing.  That union also produced another son, George.  Mary, Anna and George are listed in the 1870 census as living on 9th Street between Avenues B and C, adjacent to Tompkins Square Park.  Anna's father died and her mother remarried William Barry with Anna listed as a Barry in the 1880 census.  Catherine Barry, Anna's older sister,  married Peter Sherry around 1895 and moved to Long Island City.  We know very little about Hannah Barry.  Elizabeth Barry married Hugh Casey in 1901.  Nora Barry never married, and Mary Barry joined the Sisters of Charity in 1905, taking the  name Sister Theresa Magdalen.  

  I remember grandma McKeon regaling us with stories of life during and immediately after the blizzard of 1988.  I always imagined this to have occurred at the Glean Street house, but the following census record indicates differently.

By 1910 the family had moved to Elmhurst.

  The street name was changed to Glean Street sometime between 1910 and 1920. 

Missing from this list is the oldest son, John, who had married; his census record is below. 

Thomas McKeon died in 1925 as a result of smoke inhalation while fighting a fire.  His captain's fire helmet rested in a place of honor in our house in the Bronx (next to my father's WW1 helmet and gas mask).  Thomas is buried in Calvary Cemetery in a McKeon plot.

I have not located either Anna McKeon or any of her children in the 1930 census, but I understood when I was a child that Frank and Dorothy McKeon moved back to Glean Street with their family until the house was sold sometimes in the mid 1930s.  Anna McKeon then moved to the Bronx to live with her daughter Virginia McKeon Foy.  She died in April 1939 and is buried with her husband in Calvary Cemetery, Queens NY. 

 Thomas McKeon and Anna Wearing had the following children;

John McKeon (c1884  -  1967) married Emily ??? (1889   -  1971) and became an executive for Long Island Lighting Company. They had three children: Virginia, a nurse who trained about the same time as Anita McKeon at Flushing Hospital and married an airline pilot about 1946; Laurence, and Joan McKeon (1924  - 1999) who married George Bouchard (1921  -  1995) and raised a family in Shirley, Long Island. 

Mary ("May") McKeon (1887 - 1926) married Jim Ronaghan                                                   91886 - 1969)  in 1920. They had no children.   She was a public school teacher.   She died at 182 Glean Street, her mother's home.  She had been ill for seven months.  Her doctor was from Park Avenue in New York City, which leads me to believe that the couple lived in Manhattan after their marriage.  Jim was a lawyer who worked for a Wall Street trust company.  In the 1930s, he used to visit Virginia Foy in the Bronx, taking the New York Central from Manhattan.  We loved to meet him at the station, as he was the only person we ever know rich enough to take the expensive train.  And he was always good for a quarter ...  May is buried in Calvary Cemetery, in the Ronaghan family plot
16-28-H 16/20.

William McKeon ( 1890  -  1905) died young and is buried in Calvary Cemetery in the McKeon plot 1 South E 2 6 purchased in 1852 by John McKeon.

George McKeon (1891   -   1969) was a bachelor who worked as an administrator in New York City but lived in Queens.  In the 1920 census he was listed as a chauffer for a private family.

Francis McKeon (c1895  -   1969) married Dorothy ???(b-??; d-??).  He is listed as a traveling salesman in the 1920 census, and appears in the 1930 census in Union, New Jersey.

After returning to Long Island from New Jersey, Frank operated an independent trucking company whose principal client was Domino Sugar. The couple had two children. Eugene McKeon(1922  -  1990) served in the field artillery during World War II and became a prisoner of war 26 Nov 1944 until the end of the war in the European theater.  Eugene married Alice ??? (1917  -  1986). Eugene carried on the trucking company for several years, then worked for a larger trucking company as this industry consolidated.  Eugene and Alice had two children, Francis and Dorothy. Both children are married: Frank has two children and a stepdaughter; Dorothy Jacoby has two children, Jackie and Robert.  

Frank and Dorothy's second son, Arthur McKeon (1925 - 1994), joined the US Navy at age 16 and spent 20 years in the Navy, ending up as the hospital corpsman in the first US Navy Nuclear Submarine.  After retiring from the Navy, Arthur worked for the US Customs and eventually moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where he lived at the time of his death.

Virginia Mary ("Blossom") McKeon (1900  -   1941) graduated from Newtown High School and took piano lessons sufficient to allow her to play simple classical music.  Between high school graduation and her marriage to  Peter Foy ( 1895  -  1951) at Saint Bartholomew's Church in Elmhurst NY on 23 September 1925 she worked for Landers, Frary & Clark, an electric manufacturer. (The company wedding present was a new iron, and as was customary in those days, her employment was terminated upon her marriage.)

  Blossom and Peter had two children, Peter Foy (1927  -  ) who live in Agoura Hills, California until early 2007 and now share time between his daughter in Bloomington IL and his brother in Poughkeepsie NY  and Richard (1929  -  ) who lived in Chappaqua, NY, but returned to Poughkeepsie NY in November 2006..   Peter Foy married Eileen Howitt (1918 - 2006), a native Canadian, and the couple had one daughter, Sharon Marie Foy (1960  -  ) who married John Swanke of San Diego.  The latter couple have three children:  Michael, Erin and Megan.  John  served in Kuwait with the US Army in 2002-2003 and again in 2006*2007. The family relocated to Bloomington Illinois in Fall 2002. 

 Richard married Mary Ellen Morley  (1938  - 2006  ) on 10 Dec 1970, and the couple have two children: Peter Joseph Luke Foy (1974 - ) a prosecuting attorney first in Newark NJ and since October 2002 in Morristown, New Jersey, and Bridget Morley Mary Foy (1976 - ) a  medical school graduate who completed her third year residency in Kingston NY on 30 June 2006 and entered private practice at East Fishkill NY. .  Bridget married Jason Scott Pomerantz on 7 June 2003.  Peter, Bridget and Jason all graduated from Marist College in Poughkeepsie NY.  Peter completed his legal education at Seton Hall University School of Law in Newark NJ.  Bridget did her medical work at New York College of Osteopathic Medicine in Old Westbury NY.

For further information, see the section on Peter and Virginia Foy.

Thomas McKeon (1902  -  1962) married Florence Byrne (1905  -  1994). Although he is listed as an apprentice plumber in the 1920 census, he gravitated towards electricity and electronics. He worked for Long Island Lighting as an engineer and tinkered with television as early as 1939, intercepting signals from the nearby World's Fair.  (The family lived in Douglaston NY for many years.) Thomas died unexpectedly of a heart attack   When the couple had no children, they adopted a son, Arthur (1926 - 1984), who married twice, first to Lisa ??? by whom he had a child Barbara, and then to Carol ??? by whom he had four or five children.   Florence moved to Florida after Tom died, but returned to New York to an assisted residence in Somers NY, where Richard Foy looked after her weekly until her death in 1994.

Leo McKeon (1905  - 1986) married Rose ??? (b-??; d-??)., and towards the end of his life ran a small limousine service. Their daughter Dolores may live someplace on Long Island, but we lost track of her around 1947. The son, Billy McKeon became a career officer in the Marine Corps, served two tours in Vietnam, is now retired and lives with his wife Kayuko in Brandon, Florida.  The couple have two children:  Ayumi McKeon Van Winkle (1969 - ) and Kathryn McKeon Bruno (1975 - ).

Anita McKeon (1908  -   1942) married Thomas Joseph Morley (1905 - 1981). They had no natural children, but adopted a girl, Mary Ellen Morley  (1938  -  2006) from Father Baker's Home in Lackawanna, NY.  Anita had several miscarriages, the last one playing some part in her early death.  She is buried in Calvary Cemetery in the McKeon plot 1 South E 2 6 purchased by John McKeon in 1852, together with Kevin Morley,  her son who died at birth in 1940.

Daniel Reidy McKeon (1911  -   1974) married Dorothy McAuliffe (1905  -   1977), and they had two children, Daniel Jr, (1946  - ) who lives in Denver, and Anna (1949  -  )who lives in New Orleans. Daniel Sr. applied for the army air force in 1939, washed out as a pilot because of eyesight, but did so well in mechanics school that he spent the entire war at Keesler Field, Mississippi, training airplane mechanics.  Young Daniel is not married.  Anna married Eugene DeRoche whom she met when they were both in the air force in Maine. After leaving the service, the couple settled in Cajun Country near New Orleans,  but the couple are now divorced.  Anna obtained bachelors and masters degrees and is a social service worker.  Anna has two children:  Patricia Anne DeRoche (1973      -  )  and Travis William DeRoche (1976  -  ).  Travis served four years with the Marine Corps in Japan and Korea, and now is a college student .   Patricia is a law student in Massachusetts.
 

     most recent revision:   31 January 2007