Visiting Cork 4 - 9 July

Hi Anne:

Welcome to Ireland Reaching Out.  

I can tell you that the Dromtarriff area is on the border of Cork and Kerry and that if youare researching the O'Keefe family, they had an O'Keefe gathering last year so there should be information about that available.  Morty O'Keeffe was the contact person for the Clan gathering and the email address is:  info@oke.ie

You can also access more information at this web page and I will follow up with you as well to see if there is more current information.  http://okeeffeclans.com/contactus.html

If you have any further information, please don't hesitate to contact us. 

Kind regards,

Jane

You

Hi, Anne!  I've never seen anyone else on here with Dromagh/Dromtarriff[e] ancestors, so I thought I'd send a brief message. My great-grandmother, Elizabeth Cronin, was born there in 1835 (in the townland of Garranbaun), and several O'Keefe's married collateral realtives of mine.  Both surnames are very common in the area, of course, since they originated in Cork:  the Keefe's in East Cork (before being driven to West Cork by the Anglo-Normans) and the Cronin's in West Cork.

Although I'm in the US, I can provide some possibly useful info (some of which you may already have):

Here is a link to a page with info about the townlands in Dromtarriff/Dromagh:  https://www.townlands.ie/cork/dromtarriff/

There is a dúchas.ie site which has a huge online collection of folklore from most parishes, collected in the 1930's by local schoolchildren, and the collection covers all sorts of topics about local history, people, place names, etc.  I checked what they have for Dromagh, and there's at least one discussion of the O'Keefe family.  Here's a link to the stories collected there, where you can see that discussion and a number of others:  https://www.duchas.ie/en/src?q=dromagh&t=CbesTranscript

Here's a link to the online parish records for Dromtarriff/Dromagh, which go back to 1832:  https://registers.nli.ie/parishes/0047

I don't know whether it is mentioned in any of that info, but the parish name, Dromtarriff[e], comes from the Irish Drom Tarbh, meaning "bull ridge", and is believed to refer to an ancient pagan ceremony where a bull calf was sacrificed on May 6th near a holy well which is still located in the parish.  You probaby also know that the surname O'Keeffe is an anglicization of the Irish name Ó Caoimh, meaning "descendant of the gentle one" (my first name in Irish comes from the same word).

Enjoy your trip!

Kevin [Caoimhín]

Hello Jane - thank you for your reply. I've already been in touch with Morty and will be catching up with him while I'm there. I'm not sure he has information about how I would find a list of who's buried in the old Cemetery though - there are still some O'Keeffe headstones that can be read but not any of my direct relatives. Do you know how I'd access that?

Thanks for your information Kevin - I've been trying to find a connection between the O'Keeffes and the Cronins because my ggf's youngest brother Joseph used Cronin as his middle name when he emigrated to the US. My ggf used Cunningham - his mother's maiden name - when he came to Australia. Search for my post from 2017 for more detail and let me know if you see any connections.

Hi Anne:

You should try the website Historic Graves as they have done a lot of transcription work and recording of the graveyards all over County Cork.  The website address is here:  https://historicgraves.com/.

If you have any other questions, please let me know.  I’m glad that you made contact with Morty.