When the new church at Powerscourt gates was built, Mervyn, 7th Viscount, “requested Mr William Buckley, the then innkeeper of the Powerscourt Arms Hotel Enniskerry, who was then churchwarden, to furnish me with a list of the parishioners…[so that] the burials in the old churchyard are restricted to those families who had rights prior to 1869.” – where the old churchyard was that beside the house.
As luck would have it, this list still exists in the Powerscourt Papers at the National Library of Ireland, and I have reproduced it below. Some of the names have been annotated in pencil “decd” – so the list was obviously updated at some stage. It is in two parts: those living in the Parish and those outside. A note on the front page said that a copy of the list has been given to (I think) H Galbraith in 1879.
MS 43,061 /10: List of those with right of burial in the churchyard in Powerscourt Demesne; 2pp undated
[table “9” not found /]
The JH Keegan who contributed to the Powerscourt Hotel fund was a member of the family part of ‘Edward Keegan and Family of Kilternan’ and is buried in the family plot at Powerscourt Demesne. Edward, his wife Elizabeth and all their children (apart from my Great Grandmother Anne Susannah Sutton, nee Keegan) took advantage of this burial right and are buried together in this plot, which is fully described in ‘Cantwell’. The detailed inscriptions were invaluable in my family history research.
Roger Sutton
Roger – we are both descended from Edward Keegan as WRPK was my greatgrandfather. I would be interested in comparing what we both have on the earlier Keegan generations. Another of those in the ‘Rights of Burial’ list was my GGgrandfather John Richardson, although he and most of his direct descendants are buried in the family vault at Kilgobbin.
Michael, think we may be related! My great great grandmother was Theresa Richardson, daughter of John and Jane Richardson of Kilgobbin. She married William Moss, a Dublin physician, whose eldest son Edward Lawton Moss ( author of Shores of the Polar Sea and a sister of Phoebe Anna Traquair) was my great grandfather. His son, Colonel Edward Lawton Moss, CMG, MC FRCOG, was my grandfather. I am a retired solicitor living in Paris. I have a copy of Theresa’s ‘Memoirs and Legends’ dictated in 1904.
Kind regards
Nigel Moss
Nigel, Great to hear from you .. I havn’t been to the site for ages but came across your comment by accident. You are quite right .. John and Jane (née Hicks) Richardson were my great great grandparents. I have quite a few photographs of them .. and an oil painting of John which was done by Phoebe Anna while she was an art student at the RDS. I’m off to Italy tomorrow morning but when I am back would be delighted to share with you what information I have about the family. My email is michael.richardson@btinternet.com
Best wishes
Michael Richardson
Michael – ‘WRPK’ was my Great Grandmother’s brother. I have details of them and the other sister and brothers and their subsequent histories. As you probably know, most of that generation remained unmarried, tho’ William made up for this somewhat by being married three times.
As to the earlier generations, including Edward senior, the information I have is sketchy. Edward senior (1794-1870) married, I believe, Elizabeth Booth in about 1830. She may have been the widow of an Henry Booth who was entitled to the property known as Verney Farm in Kilternan. Edward thus became the farm’s owner and he and his family farmed it until it passed by the marriage of WRPK’s daugther Silvia Dorothy Keegan to the Fox family, in whose hands it remained until quite recently.
The Keegan and Booth families were the major tenants in the Townland of Bahana, Wicklow. Other local Keegans of Edward’s generation included a Richard, a Thomas and an Henry and they may well have been his brothers. Certainly, intermarriage between Protestant farming families such as the Keegans/Suttons/Booths and (now) Richardsons was common and created a quite complicated family tree structure. Local migration to Kilternan, in my ancestors’ case and KIlgobbin in yours, I think must have been an economic necessity.
Please, if you wish, contact me directly at rogersut@btinternet.com to further this discussion.
The last keegan to live in bahana was william keegan who is buried in calary church yard. He was married to sofia manning who’s mothers maiden name was saul. Booths lived in bahana and the wood behind us was known as Booths wood and had a house in a field now in ruins they then moved to another house in bahana and the last family there died circa 1950 they were james and henry (gemmy and har)