One of my friends has the last name, Keefe. I have gotten into a habit of calling her O’Keefe to try and make her laugh. I am not very funny. Recently, mid-FaceTime, I had an idea. Could we find out if her ancestors were O’Keefe’s?
She knew her grandfather’s name, and we found him in the 1940 census at age 2. His surname was still Keefe. We discovered that her grandfather’s father, Edmond, graduated from Boston College in 1928! It was news to her. And, ironic, because we are students at Duke. Boston College’s 1908 Gasson Hall influenced the Duke Chapel’s construction in 1932.
We dug back farther into the censuses. My friend’s great-great-grandfather, John, was still named Keefe in 1910. The census listed his birthplace as Massachusetts but his parents’ birthplace as Ireland. We were getting closer!
And, with another click, there it was. We found the O’Keefe’s! There they were in Connecticut in 1870. My friend’s great-great-great-great-grandparents, from Ireland, 150 years ago.
By 1880, only ten years later, her 4th-great-grandparents dropped the “O”. Just like that, she went from O’Keefe to Keefe.
A joke turned into an exciting half-hour of genealogy research! And it is only the beginning.
Tip: Your ancestors likely “Americanized” their surnames or first names. Censuses, immigration records, and naturalization cards can help you determine who changed their name and when they did it. Vital records — birth, marriage, and death — will be crucial for your search. I used Ancestry to find these census records. You can visit FamilySearch and MyHeritage, too.
Jack Palmer has done genealogy research since he was ten years old and loves writing about it for family, friends, and anybody else who might enjoy research stories and advice. He graduated from Duke University in May 2023, majoring in History and Psychology, and is the author of Helen & Frank: A Biography, a biography about his great-grandparents.
