8. the line of Thomas Michael Brown

John Brown (1842-1897)
and Annie Keegan (1844-1891)

The Keegan Family -- coopers and curriers

We have traced the Keegan family back to Daniel Keegan, a cooper (barrel maker), born between 1755-1770 in Ireland. The Daniel name wasn't very common, there being only about six or seven Daniel Keegans living in Ireland in his time. The closest record I've found is a Daniel Keegan who died in 1865 in Mullingar, Westmeath, Ireland -- at the age of 109! Daniel-1 Keegan, the cooper, had at least two children born in Ireland, Jeremiah and Daniel-2 Keegan, our direct ancestor.

Daniel-2 Keegan emigrated to England some time before he turned 30 in 1823. On his daughter's wedding record, Daniel-2's occupation was listed as currier which could mean two things: (1) someone who dressed the coat of a horse with a curry comb or (2) someone who tanned leather by incorporating oil or grease.

The Keegans in 1841...

In 1841 Daniel-2 Keegan 50 and his Irish-born wife Mary 40 lived on ?Glap House Street, Whitechapel Saint Mary's in the Tower Hamlet area of southeast London, where five of their six children were born. Only our direct ancestor Annie Keegan Brown, the youngest Keegan, was born elsewhere. Jeremiah Keegan 41, who we presume was Daniel-2's brother, worked as cigar makers along with his two nephews, 18-year-old William and 15-year-old Daniel-3.

The household:
Daniel-2 Keegan 50
Mary Keegan 40
Jeremiah Keegan 41
William Keegan 18
Daniel Keegan 15
Catherine Keegan 10
Elizabeth (Betsy)Keegan 8
Michael Keegan 4.

In the early 1840s, the family moved east to nearby Kent County: probably Maidstone first, then later to Gravesend. (Gravesend is east of central London, at the mouth of the Thames River.) On March 17, 1845, the oldest, William Keegan, married Margaret McCarthy in Saint Mary's RC?? church in Whitechapel, Middlesex. After that event, we lose track of Annie Keegan's three older siblings (William, Daniel-3 and Catherine). They either died, changed their name by marriage or moved to Ireland or America. We do know either William or Daniel-3 died young, because a niece named Emma Keegan was living with Michael Keegan in 1871.

The only Keegan relative showing up in the 1851 census is Betsy Keegan who was a servant at the Custom Inspector's house in Gravesend. Later she became a hotel cook. Betsy married Benjamin Pitt in April, 1867, and he died barely a year later. Of Annie Keegan Brown's five siblings, Betsy was the most important to the Brown family, since she lived with the family all the time our grandfather, Thomas M Brown, was growing up. Annie Keegan's father, Daniel-2 Keegan died before 1861, very likely in 1857 in Gravesend, and we believe her mother Mary died in the early 1870s.

The Keegans in 1861...

The 1861 England Census, (three years before she married John Brown), is the earliest record we have of Annie Keegan. At 16 years old, she was living at 5 Chapel lane in Gravesend with her widowed mother Mary and her 19-year-old brother Michael. Mary Keegan was a laundress, age 60 and born in Ireland. Annie Keegan's older sister, Elizabeth Keegan 23, was working nearby as a cook at a Gravesend hotel. I can't find a birth record for Annie Keegan; her birthplace in 1861 was listed as "Maidstone, Kent, England." Annie and Brother Michael (born Whitechapel, Middlesex, England) were dealers in rags and bones (i.e. junk dealers). Although the rag dealer gig doesn't sound very prosperous, Michael was still pursuing that occupation in the 1871 census when he was living near Gravesend in Dartford with his Irish-born wife Ellen and his 9-year-old niece Emma Keegan.

The mysterious origins of John Brown…

We have not traced the Brown family back very far, and unless DNA helps us, we probably never will learn his origins. We only know his father, who was also a Mariner named John, died before 1865. (source his wedding registration in 1865). He listed many different England birthplaces on English Census records, ("Stepney, Middlesex" in 1871 and "London" in 1881), probably couldn't keep his story straight since he was really born in (Cork?) Ireland. Nor do we know his exact day or year of birth; best guess is late in 1841. The 1861 England Census is the earliest record we have of John Brown, and there are two right-aged seamen John Browns who were sailing out of Gravesend.

Nor do we even know John Brown's last name. Patsy is sure Brown was not the real name. When Thomas M Brown died, his sisters wrote asking us if he ever told us the real family name; their father had never told them. Speculations on his birth name have included MacNamara. Personally, I think Occam's Razor: his name WAS Brown. And he may simply have claimed English birth to receive better Merchant Navy assignments. See the caption of the Cork Harbor map for my latest favorite theories.

Nor do we know why he fled Ireland. The family story is that he promised to serve in the Navy in the place of some rich young man, took the money, came to London and lived under the fake name of Brown.

In another family story, John Brown supposedly was one of the Fabian Socialists in Dublin along with George Bernard Shaw, so he was in trouble for his socialist activism. Although it's my favorite story, I am sad to report that it can't be true. (I'm surprised no one has ever done the math on this before.) The Fabian Socialist Society was founded in Dublin in January 1884 -- when John Brown was 43 years old. Since before age 21, he'd been going out to sea from Gravesend, England, often to far away places like the West Indies. In his off time, he had an asthmatic wife at home with five children the last born that very year of 1843. Also, he would certainly have steered clear of Dublin where he was a wanted man or at least personna non gratis.

John + Annie. 1865 & 1866 in Gravesend

John Brown & Annie Keegan were married January 7, 1865 in St John's Chapel, a Catholic Church in Gravesend, Kent, England, where both Annie and John were living at the time: John Brown on Edwin Street and Annie at 5 Chapel lane. John's age was 23; Annie was 19. In late 1866, John & Annie's first child, John J. "Jack" Brown, was born.

In 1871…

By the 1871 Census, the John Brown-Annie Keegan family has moved. They live at 31 Thomas St, Woolwich, Kent. This is in eastern London, south of the Thames River. This district, Woolwich Arsenal, was then a munitions factory and storage armory and is today the stadium of the famous English soccer team the Arsenal. John Brown, occupation: mariner, was 30. Annie Keegan Brown was 25, Jack Brown was 4. Elizabeth Pitt, 34, hotel cook and Annie's widowed sister was there as a visitor. At some point, they had a baby girl, Elizabeth Anne Brown, who died at 18 months old. I think it was during this period and that she fell out the window. I remember Aunt Annie telling a story like that. Nobody else remembers this story.

In 1881…

The John Brown-Annie Keegan family lived at 4 Whitworth Place, Woolwich, London, Plumstead, West district. Per Ursula, Annie Keegan had asthma and was ill for many years before she died in 1891, possibly why her sister lived there. Except for Jack, all the children's birthplaces were Woolwich, Kent.

The household:
John Brown, mariner, was 41.
Annie Keegan Brown was 36.
Jack Brown was 14.
William Brown was 9.
Thomas Michael Brown, our grandfather was 7.
Annie Brown (later Annie Brown Kelly) was 2.
Elizabeth Pitt , (wife's sister, widow, domestic help), was 45.

In 1891…

The family still lived on Whitworth Place, but now they lived at 7 Whitworth Place and sister Elizabeth Pitt lived at #8 Whitworth Place, Woolwich, London, district of Plumstead, West. The town then was called West India Dock London.

The 1891 Census taken on night of April 5,1891, just six days before Annie Keegan Brown died on April 11, 1891. Neither John Brown nor son William were listed; we know they were both at sea from John's letters.

The household:
Annie (Keegan) Brown was 47.
John (Jack) Brown was 24. He was single, a metal worker.
Thomas Brown was 17. His occupation was carpenter.
Annie Brown (later Annie Brown Kelly) was 12.
Emma Brown was 7.
Elizabeth Pitt (sister, cook, domestic) was 58.

Faster communication needed

In John's July, 1891 letter to his wife, he obviously did not yet know she had died three months earlier! How ironic that he missed her death while on a mission to speed up global communications by laying the Trans-Atlantic cable. He served on many cable ships for the last ___ years of his life. I think it was just very hard work, and he was getting too old to pull his weight.

CABLE GUY: John's letter dated July 4, 1891 begins "My dear wife, I hope you are better than when I last saw you…" What irony. His wife Annie Keegan had died almost three months earlier. We can't even imagine such painfully slow communication in a family emergency. Double irony. John Brown was [absent in the cause of] [improving international communication] away because he was part of changing all that. Since about , he'd been serving on cable ships laying the Transatlantic cable. Just a year later and he would have received a telegram that his wife had died. laying the vable tha would soon make a telegram possible]

After the mother's 1891 death…

The family had been devout Irish Catholics. Upon the death of 17-year-old Thomas Michael's mother Annie Keegan Brown, the priest refused to bury her in holy ground unless they paid a lot of money. Influenced by that experience, Thomas later became an Anglican. I recently visited the cemetery where Annie Keegan Brown was buried in Plumstead Cemetery, Section A, grave number 989. So few headstones were numbered that we couldn't figure out the numbering system. I photographed both possibles; neither one had a headstone. Bill (William Mathew) Brown, her second son, was buried with her when he died in 1932. According to John's letters and family stories, he was n'er do well sailor and a drinker who never married. He did visit our family in Canada.

After their mother's death, the two girls Annie 12 and Emma 7 were sent to a convent school in France (probably Alsace) run by the Ursuline nuns. (This inspired both our grandfather and his sister to name a daughter after the Anglo Saxon saint, Saint Ursula.) Emma was a POW during World War II, I guess because of her British citizenship. After graduating, Annie returned to England and married Frank Kelly; later the Kellys trained horses in Belgium until they had to flee during World War II, leaving the horses behind for the Germans.

By the time their Mother died, the three sons had already been apprenticed and were accepted into their trades: Jack a seaman and metalworker, Bill a seaman, and Thomas Brown was already a carpenter when his mother died, and nine years later, he married our grandmother Annie Chaplin in West Ham, London. In the 1901 England Census, Thomas Brown 27 and Annie Chaplin Brown 20 (and her 6-yr-old sister Florrie Chaplin) lived at 12 Lower Wood St, Woolwich, London County.

John Brown, mariner… goes down on the ship

sad final chapter of John Brown, mariner…

John Brown, father of Thomas Michael, had always been a mariner and, by this time, had worked his way up to being a sea captain. When he couldn't get another English ship (because of his age or bad times), he lived in France. All he could get was the captaincy of the cable-laying crew with a transatlantic cable company. While on a cable laying voyage, he caught pneumonia and died May 23, 1897 in the French Possession, St. Pierre Island, off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

8. the line of Thomas Michael Brown continued here

John Brown & Annie Keegan.

The Clann MacAodhagain (Egan, Keegan and McKeegan) is an Irish Clan centred on Redwood Castle in Tipperary.

In 2011, we visited Gravesend Cemetery where Daniel Kegine was buried January 26, 1857 aged 75 years. Pretty bleak. As the photo shows, it just looks like empty ground, because he was buried in a common grave, meaning there are other unrelated people buried there. (A mass pauper's grave, I guess.) FYI, it's grave 325, section A-11. We can't be sure this is our Daniel Keegan, because the name is spelled differently, and the 1782 birthdate is off 9 years from the 1841 census. Still, I think it's him, because Daniel Keegan was a rare name in England and even in Ireland. Plus he died in Gravesend, where his widow and children lived in 1861.

John Brown & Annie Keegan were married January 7, 1865 here in St John's Chapel, a Roman Catholic Church in Gravesend, England, where they both lived at the time.

The church looks much the same today.

Here are John Brown's parents in Ireland. The man was named John and a mariner who died before 1865. But that information, learned from his son and Annie Keegan's wedding certificate, is all we know for sure. (Note: Ursula swears these are Thomas Michael Brown's Irish fraternal grandparents, but there is a little doubt.)

Maybe a brush with history... On April 7th 1861, the night of the 1861 England Census, there was a seaman named John Brown aboard a Gravesend vessel named the Trent. The Trent was heading out to sea from Holyhead in Wales. On November 8th 1861 near Cuba, the Royal Mail Steamship Trent was forcibly boarded by a Yankee warship which fired two shots over the Trent's bow and removed two Confederate liasons to England. "The Trent Affair" almost started a new war with England during the US Civil War. Was our relative on board during this huge international incident? That's a definite maybe.

IF, and it's a big IF, John Brown's original name was Brown. hat case, the closest record I've found is a John Browne baptized July 30, 1842 in the Saints Peter & Paul RC church in city center of Cork. Father & mother were John Browne & Margaret Donovan. Sponsor was Mary Donovan. At the bottom, you can see Crosshaven, the village in the Cork Harbor where I think John Brown came from. hat case, the closest record I've found is a John Browne baptized July 30, 1842 in the Saints Peter & Paul RC church in city center of Cork. Father & mother were John Browne & Margaret Donovan. Sponsor was Mary Donovan.

Annie Keegan with her children. Photo date estimated at 1879. Thomas Michael Brown 6, Annie Brown Kelly 10 mos, Mother 35, and Bill 8 . The oldest, Jack, age 13, was already an apprentice seaman, at sea with his father, John Brown.

Sailing ships in the South West India Docks circa 1880

A memory card from Annie Keegan's funeral

This Burmuda stamp commemorates the laying of the Transatlantic Cable between Burmuda and Nova Scotian in 1890. Per his letters, John Brown served on the Cable Ship Westmeath in 1891 (and probably 1990 also). Cable work done by the Westmeath in 1991: Paramaribo - Cayenne, French Guiana, Cayenne - Vizen, Brazil, Mole St Nicholas - Port au Prince, Haiti, Fort de France Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, and Guadeloupe The Saints Island

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