I have never found Irish genealogies easy to research and certainly with my own Irish lineage I have come to know very little. Both my grannies are part Irish, and this is a prominent part of my own dna, one family connection, through my nanny Eileen, being to Westmeath in central Ireland (although in one census it contrarily says that the place of origin is Cork), and the other, through my granny Isabelle, being to County Kerry on the west coast. Both families left Ireland during the 1800's to seek a better life in London. But specifically what were their lives in Ireland remains mysterious.
Mary Dolan, my Irish great great grandmother
So this is what I found in regard to any record whatsoever for a Mary Dolan in Westmeath at the very time she says she was born there, in 1866, which is in the tiny Westmeath village of Coole, there being a Mary Dolan there indeed, the second child of Michael Dolan (the correct name of her father according to her later marriage details given in England) and the mother being Mary Glennon, poor people with good old Irish names. The other children were Michael, Thomas, Margaret, Bridget, Patrick and John. John would eventually emigrate to New York.
Name: Mary Dolan Baptism Date: 14th November Baptism Place: Castlepollard, Westmeath Birth Place: Coole, Westmeath Birth Date: 3 Oct 1866 Father's Name: Michael Dolan and Mother's Name: Mary Glennon Godparents: Michael Quillan and Bridget Glennon
1866 Castlepollard baptismal entry for Mary Dolan of Coole which includes the names of the godparents
Castlepollard (near to the grand lake of Deveragh), being the nearest market town to Coole, this was where Mary and her siblings were baptised.
St Michael's Church of Castlepollard where Mary was baptised
Mary's older brothers: Michael Dolan who had been born in 1859, baptised at Castlepollard on September 5th, his godparents being Michael and Catherine Fagan; James, born in 1863, baptised at Castlepollard on 23rd August, his godparents being Patrick Glennon and Catherine McEnroe; and Thomas, born in 1865, baptised 13th August at Castlepollard, his godparents being James McEnroe and Mary Boylan.
1859 baptism at Castlepollard for Michael Dolan, Mary's older brother
1863 baptism at Catlepollard for James Dolan
Coole village, near to the town of Castlepollard, rests on a plateau overlooking the ancient Bog of Allen, and since olden times the family would have depended on the peat from this bog to use as their fuel. This peatland is now recognised to be as important a part of Irish natural heritage as the Book of Kells. In prehistoric times there were wooden trackways across this peat, indicating just how relevant this place was to the people of olden times.
The bog of Allen where lived my ancestors
Mary's grandfather, Thomas Dolan, also lived in Coole, listed as living with his family in a delapidated house, this being one of many properties on the main road belonging to the Reverand Thomas Smith.
The family name of Dolan is an anglicisation of the Irish Gaelic name Dobhailen and means the defiant one. The O Dobhailen family first entered the written records in the twelfth century, though were of old the ancient Irish people before the coming of any conquerors.
Two sisters to Mary were born, Margaret Dolan, born in 1868, baptised 17th September at Castlepollard, her godparents being Thomas Glenn and Anne Graill, and Bridget Dolan, was born in 1870, baptised 21st December at Castlepollard, the godparents being Michael and Ellen Dolan. I've seen that this other Michael and his wife Ellen were also raising a family locally at this time, Ellens maiden name being Doyle; I guess that the two Michaels would have been cousins.
Baptism of Mary's sister Margaret Dolan
Baptism of Mary's sister, Bridget Dolan
By the time Mary was 8 years old, in 1874, her family had moved nearby to Lickbla, (also spelt as Lickblea or Lickblagh) as can be seen from the baptism there of her brother Patrick. Lickbla was 4 miles outside Castlepollard, and was another tiny village connected with the Dolan family. The remains of a megalithic cairn is to be found at Lickblea, and limestone was for long quarried in this area.
Lickblea church, now in ruins
1874 Baptism of Mary's brother Patrick: 1874 24th April baptism at Lickblea, Westmeath Patrick Dolan, son of Michael Dolan and Mary Glenan
Mary's parents and grandparents lived through the difficult times of the potato famine, in which over a million people died, and a million fled the country. Their own county of Westmeath lost a quarter of its population through starvation, disease and immigration. By the time Mary was 13 the blight had returned and this seeming repeating situation was likely what prompted her and maybe others of her family to leave Ireland for good.
I have seen that Mary had moved to England by at least the age of 16, visiting for a while the Whiteman family in Portsea, there helping with the little ones during the absence of their mother Jane, and particularly caring for a little Florence, aged only 2, who I can pretty much assume was enough of a delight for Mary to eventually bestow that same name of Florence onto her own daughter. Mr William Whiteman was a former army sargeant and now prison warder from Northampton, who had moved around widely, being formely in Jersey and more lately in Mauritius, the birthplace of little Florence. Another of the warders was Irish, James McLoughlin, who formerly had lived in Gibralter, and the prison guards wife was also Irish. All lived in the same building, at number 7 Anchor Gate Terrace. It is quite likely that is through one of these Irish inhabitants that Mary was given her introduction to Mr Whiteman.
Mary next headed for the big city, London, coming close to marrying one fellow, a Scotsman, but that falling apart and she meeting the man truly destined for her, an English boiler maker, William Maxted, with whom she took up residence in the Hammersmith area at 12 Miles Street. Mary was 27 years old and six months pregnant when they married one another in early 1887, the marriage details being where we get to hear the information that Mary's father Michael had already died. This is where I wonder if I have been barking up the wrong tree, because later, in 1901, there was in Lickbla, back in Ireland, a still very much alive Michael Dolan with his wife Mary, of likely age. This 1901 census does Bridget, another daughter, of correct age, being at home. There was another Michael Dolan in the area, of similar age, but he was married to an Ellen Doyle. It could be so that Mary gave incorrect information to the church authorities, being estranged from her family; but for this detail I am hampered in knowing for sure is this really is our correct family that I have discovered and all remains a mystery still.
1901 Census Lickbla, Glore, Westmeath House 9, Michael Dolan, age 66, and his wife Mary Dolan, age 62 Bridget Cunningham, daughter, age 28, and her children Maria, 7, William, 6, Rose, 4, and baby Ellie
So the man Mary had been first engaged to, when she was 19 years old, was a 22 year old soldier, Henry Black Douglas McClaren, and they even went through three weeks of banns at St Peters church, in Hammersmith, London, but the very next day the wedding never went ahead. Rather the following year Henry married another girl, Alice Wright, and by 1891 at the age of just 29 he was dead, by which time Mary had married William Maxted and was up in Sunderland.
I'm still inclined to consider this as a possibility for our Irish family, and that Mary gave false information about her father being dead, points to consider being that Mary was never so inclined to convey the truth to authorities, it being seen that she gave different places of birth for herself in various census's, from Westmeath to Cork to London. And I have seen it now that she likely originally came to London to join her older brother Michael Dolan, as he is to be seen, the same age of her brother and of Ireland, in Hammersmith where she herself had been living. In the 1891 census he was living in a posh house at the Grove, being a live-in caretaker for a family not at the time present, with his new wife, a Londoner Alice Mary Garrett (from Kings Cross), and their four month old baby Gerard Garrett Dolan. Ten years later, according to the 1901 census, he was living in at the police station in Erith, south east London, his work unspecified, with Alice and their children Gerard and Ethel, both born in Hammersmith, and Bertha born in Lewisham. And I do see it tat back in 1881 when he was 24 years old he was single and a police constable lodging with a large amount of other police constables. A Michael Dolan in Hammersmith could be but a coincidence mind you; there were plenty of Dolans around London. Although I have had fun researching this family they may not be relevant to my own family at all.