According to a document at the  United Kingdom Royal Hospital Chelsea Pensioner Admissions and Discharges 1715-1925, John McKeown youngest son of William McEwen (McKewn) and Elizabeth Mendenhall was born ) about 1786 in Ballnemore, Latrim, Northern Ireland. He sired six children, two boys and four girls: William Jr., Anne, Belle, Martha, John, and Betsey.

         Finding documentation in Ireland is almost impossible, during certain periods and this is the case for John and his family. 

          John married Elizabeth Cunningham in about 1810. A year later my second great-grandfather was born in Aghalee, Antrim, Northern Ireland.

          The couple had settled in Antrim, while John served in the military. In 1812, John admitted him to the Chelsea Military Hospital, reason unknown. It was in 1826, when their fourth child was born in Magheramesk, Antrim, Northern Ireland, that he retired from the 87th Regiment of Foot Soldiers, was discharged and given his pension. He was forty years of age at the time.

         I have two dates for John’s death, October 21, 1851, in Magheramesk, Antrim, Northern Ireland and another several years after the death of his wife, or 27 May 1869, in Northern Ireland. Depending on which is the correct death, John would have been sixty-five or eighty-four years of age.