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O'Keefe MacNeil great-great grandson ... but ours was Mary Ellen MacNeil -daughter of John of PEI to Chelsea ..who married (1888?) a James S O'Keefe who had just come in from Ireland-Cork.
Grandmother's stories reference Nova Scotia people who bothered her because they wouldn't naturaize & vote ... and she married the son a Mattapan PEI Scottish McCormack who had a realty business. Then come the fire stories .. then come (sadly) a slur of the Jews ruining Chelsea ... then the fire and their (Jewish) welcomed relocation to what became Mattapan & Brookline because they couldn't buy in South Boston part of Dorchester after the Chelsea fire. As to the 'slur' they were really referenced as 'forign' not truly anti-semitic by my grandmother Anne O'Keefe-MacNeil McCormack. [1890-1973] She was a suffragette too so the vote was important. SMC [SMC ed note ... The real estate laws at that time 1900? -but not today - permitted contracts which barred sales to various ethnicities. ... that practice is out lawed today.] A reference to Mattapan's history with Brookline is elsewhere here on this site. In that history the same accomodaing spirit enabled middle class to fight South Boston bigotry and move into Mattapan & Dorchester in the 1960s. |