Dublin Dowlings

Laurence Dowling

Born:  1832

Died:  September 1867

Son of James Dowling and Eliza Keane

Brother of Mary Ann, William, Eliza, James, and Robert

FACTS

Over the last six years I have searched extensively in the online civil war archives and the Tombstone Project for any sign of either Laurence or William, but have come up with nothing so far. Dad also had correspondence with the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the sixties, who too found nothing. Instead searches in and around Houston at that time inevitably bring me to Richard "Dick" Dowling.

One of the great Confederate heroes, Dick Dowling, the son of immigrants from Galway, was a bartender in Houston before the war. In September 1863, aged 26 years, he found himself in charge of the 47 Davis Guards at Fort Griffin when they were attacked by a fleet of 22 ships carrying 5,000 Federal men attempting to land and take over Texas. Such was the accuracy of the Davis Guard gunners however, that within forty minutes the 47 had routed the 5,000, with the capture of two gunboats and without a single Confederate casualy, bar one soldier who got a wooden splinter in his arm. Needless to say, 1st Lieutenant Dowling was soon Major Dick Dowling.

Dick, like Laurence, died of Yellow Fever in Houston in September 1867. Given that his death must have been widely reported, I had thought that there might have been a case of mistaken identity in the news of her brother's death getting back to Mary Ann. The reality, however is far grimmer.

Throughout the nineteenth century, "the yellow jack", as Yellow Fever was known, regularly swept through Texas, but never more devastatingly so than in the summer and autumn of 1867, when 1,900 died in Harris County and 1,100 more at Galveston. Such was the speed and virulance of the disease - a perfectly healthy victim could be dead within three days and mortality rates could be as high as 85% - that mass burials were not uncommon.

While half of the streets and hospitals in southeast Texas have been named after Dick Dowling, it may well be that Laurence lies in an unmarked grave.

Yellow Fever

Dick Dowling