Laurence Dowling
Born: unknown
Died: December 1807
Married to Elenor Kavanagh in St Andrews Parish Chapel, 2 October 1792.
Children: James, William, Anne.
FACTS
Nothing is known of Laurence other than that which Mary Anne tells us in her notes.
The whereabouts of St Andrews Parish is also unknown. I checked the records of St Andrews, Westland Row (RC), in the National Library in 1996 and found no matching record (Microfilm P6066).
I also checked Records of Marriages, St Andrews C of I, 1670-1877 in the National Archives (Printed Copy M5135). No matching entry.
Most likely lived in Portobello, since we know that his wife and children lived there in 1841.
SPECULATION
Willie believed that Laurence may have been a convert (in his letter to Osmond in 1953) and also that he was a naval captain. A cutlass and foils belonging to him were in our possession until the 1920's.
The Church of Ireland records mentioned above have a William Dowling, married 3 October 1782. Could this be a brother, the first of five Williams (ending with yours truly)?
Dublin Diocesan Index to Wills 1800-1853 (RR9293 in Nat. Lib.) lists Intestacy of Lawrence Dowling, Portobello, Co Dublin, Publican, 1808. p197.
I believe this is our man, retired sea captain turned publican. The population of Dublin at that time was about 200,000, Portobello a suburb of less than a square mile. Unfortunately, there is no will.
Kathleen says that the picure on the right may be Laurence, or his son James. I think it's probably neither. Carte de Visite portrait like this only became fashionable in the early 1850s, 40 years after Laurence died. (Source: Ian Jeffrey. Photography: A Concise History. 1981, Thames and Hudson, London.)
QUESTIONS
The date of the picture set me thinking about what age Laurence might have been when he married in 1792. We know he was married for 15 years and had three children within the first four of those. His wife Elenor outlived him by 34 years. This seems to suggest two possibilities. Either he married at "normal" age (whatever might have been considered normal for urban bourgeosie at the end of the 18th century) and died at no more than 45 or 50, his wife of a similar age living on to her mid-eighties, or he was married in late fifties/early sixties to a much younger woman. There is no record or memory of the hardship that might have been faced by a young widow with three children (indeed there was money enough to commission a portrait of Anne within ten years of her father's death - it hangs still on our wall), so the first possibility depends on Elenor having money of her own. For me, the second scenario fits in with the speculation above: retired sea-captain comes home to land with his life savings, buys a pub at the end of the newly opened Grand Canal (extended from James St to meet the Liffey in 1790) so that he can stay near sea-faring (or at least water-faring) people and finds and marries a young wife.
It may be a little Irish to fixate on Laurence's religion, but another check in the National Archives has produced no documents other than I had seen before and mentioned above. A St Andrew's Church (C of I) had occupied the site of the old Norse Thingmote in what is now Andrews Street since 1674. It has recently been converted into the Dublin Tourism offices, and the small graveyard alongside relocated. Was Laurence among them? We do know that he is unlikely to be with Elenor and their children, since Glasnevin (Prospect) Cemetry did not open till 1832. Willie may have been more than right - possibly Elenor was the one who brought her children up as Catholics after their father's death.
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