Dublin Dowlings

Letter from Willie to Osmond

14 Rosebank Road
Childwall
Liverpool 16
19/1/53

Dear Osmond

Very pleased to get your letter last week and quite interested in all you tell me abut looking up records. I enclose copies of my Father and Mothers birth certificate which they for some reason or other (they) procured from a Fr Carroll in Rathmines in 1908 & 1913. You will see Fathers Mothers name Eliza Keane & my Mothers Mother, Johnston. As to the James Dowling, Clerk, this was my Grandfather who was in Civil Service Customs Ho. & I remember him well. Pensioned off at 60 I believe and drew it for 30 yrs. He spent his earlier pension years amateur actor in McBeth etc; Some old Theatre (Winetavern St in those days) & Fencing with boxing thrown in.

Wm Gartland whom I also well remember (Civil Engineer Dublin Corp.) spent his late years as in his early days study and reading no time for any one except they worked.

Robert D. my Father, did do a bit of time Printer Freemans Journal but was Solicitors Clerk in Ennis office. You see in little book Ennis mentioned. Great friends of Synge St family the house "GOSPORT" on Grosvenor Rd where I as a kid spent many happy time with my Aunt Eliza.

Now we go to Laurence who married Eleanor Kavanagh Oct 1792. This was my Great-Grandfather & as far as I can make out was a naval captain, the man whose cutlass I had and some foils all of which disappeared in Silverbeech Rd. You may remember them.

Where this St Andrew's was I do not know. It may have been a Protestant Church for I have an idea he was a convert. Have a go at that. My aunt Eliza (Dowling) married her cousin Henry Pujola, an uncle on his mother's side of Patrick O'S.

I am not surprised of the Americans looking up records for my Father when he went out met his two brothers Laurence and Wm. Both of them had been in the Civil War and strange enough one on Federal & other on Confederate side. They may have married for all I know. Then their are a lot of my Uncle's children Johnston Gartland another CE whom my mother met there also (her brother). So I would suggest poor Fran be let ease her mind, as I guess nothing doing, unless to borrow a bob.

...

[There follows two more pages, briefly about Christmas, but mainly about the prospective comparitive velocities of various equine thoroughbreds. Historians of the Turf can check whether an dividend was to be had from either Knock Hard or Dark Millionaire in January 1953.]

...

No more news regards to all the boys in the office and Mr McCann.
& with best love to Fran and self
Yours
Da Da