PIONEER'S DEATH

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 250, 21 October 1944, Page 8

PIONEER'S DEATH

MRS. MARGARET O'KEEFE

Onehunga lost another of her pioneers last week when Mrs. Margaret O'Keefe passed away in her 92nd year. Mrs. O'Keefe was a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who came to Onehunga from Ireland in 1849, Mr. Campbell being a soldier. Her mother in after years, when a widow, married Mr. George Hart, who came to Onehunga in the Berhampore, also in 1849. Both these families are still well known in Onehunga.

Mrs. O'Keefe was born in Onehunga and could remember when the first Catholic church was a raupo whare on the site where the present church now stands. Her family at one time occupied the pensioners' cottage in Galway Street, which had served as the first convent. The nuns slept upstairs, which was really not much more than a loft, after the fashion of cottages in those days, the convent work being carried on in the tiny downstairs rooms.

When the convent building was built the school was in such demand as a boarding school that the nuns used to neglect their own meals. Mrs. O'Keefe's mother used to often cook a meal especially for them and send it over with Margaret.

Mrs. O'Keefe had her education at Mr. Cassin's school in Queen Street in a cottage which was afterwards used as a butcher's shop by the late Mr. Daniel Neilson (now Hellaby's). -Mrs. O'Keefe had in her possession photographs of the first schoolmaster and his wife, who was born in 1801. The photograph shows the typical old schoolmaster. "A man severe he was and stern to view."