June 4, 2007

The Doolans of Coalgap John Ottow

This being my first visit to Ireland, I had little expectations about finding any connections of my mother’s family, the Doolans of Maple Grove, Wisconsin and any Doolans in Ireland. About all I knew about my Doolan heritage was that they were from Ireland. The most promising shred of connection I had was by Googling “Doolan Ireland” and discovering a few Doolan businesses in the County Offaly area and that there was a Doolan Pub in Waterford, Ireland; the Waterford of Waterford Crystal fame. I arrived in Ireland with the goal of maybe getting my picture taken in front of a pub or store bearing the surname of Joseph H. Doolan; my grandfather, a man of half-Irish lineage, who like so many Americans felt he was as Irish as the Emerald Isle itself.

Finding a Doolan in Ireland was a minor priority of our vacation. A much higher priority was for Jill and I to enjoy the rich hospitality of the Irish people. What better way to know these warm and friendly people but to spend time in the countryside and villages. By our second evening in Ireland, we had learned that the pubs get lively about 10:00 or 11:00 in the evening, about the time the locals show up to listen to and watch fellow locals put on a jam session of Irish tunes. This particular night, was found ourselves in a small town in the Connemara Peninsula, in a pub off the main road, waiting for colorful people carrying musical instrument to walk through the door.

As you can imagine, we were not disappointed; we had a wonderful evening of listening to impromptu traditional melodies and talking to fisherman, farmers and others. One of the last people we talked to that evening was a gentleman about my age, a professor at a local college, who asked me if I was Irish and if I was planning on looking up any of my Irish heritage while I was in Ireland. I told him of Doolans in the County Offaly area (which I pronounced O’fall-ee) and I was immediately told that “we pronounce it County ‘Awfully’. After that friendly correction, I was given a few tips. Look in the telephone books for a cluster of your family name, when you find that cluster look in the graveyards and church records.

I spent the next two day asking to look at phonebooks when we stopped at towns. I found a good number of Doolans in the County Galway phonebook but I found the cluster I was looking for in the County Offally phonebook. On top of that, in the business section of the book I found a number of Doolan businesses, the most promising looking was the Liam and Maura Doolan Store of Kilcormac. We headed just a few miles from where we were staying to Kilcormac, to look for the Doolan store. I have to admit, I drove into the small town looking for the quintessential Irish store. Perhaps an old grocery store or butcher shop with an ancient storefront with peeling paint, maybe we would find Liam or Maura behind the counter with a stained white apron.

As we drove into Kilcormac the village fulfilled every expectation. It was a picturesque town with streets so narrow it was necessary to pull to the far left curb to let any oncoming car pass. As imagined, there were quaint and antiquated shops with the names of the owners; names like Murphy’s Pub and O’Malley’s Hardware but no Doolan’s in the center of this village. As we about to reenter the countryside we finally spotted it, “Doolan’s” it was a mini-mart and BP gas station, far from the quaint historic store I was looking for. I had found a Doolan store in Ireland, at some level, a victory. Jill supported me through this disappointment and I told her I wanted to go into the store and at least talk to a Doolan in Ireland. Jill waited in the car while I went inside. I asked the cashier where Mr. Doolan was and was told he would be right back. While I waited, I perused the store, noting the similarity to the Doolan store to almost every other mini-mart I have ever been in with a selection of everything from gossip tabloids to cappuccino.

Finally Liam Doolan emerged from the back room and I introduced myself, “Mr. Doolan? My name is John Ottow. I am a Doolan from the United States.” Although he was obviously very busy in the running of his store, he gave me about 10 minutes of his valuable time; telling me how glad he was to meet me, taking my contact information and giving me his. In giving me his phone number, he told me to contact me if we had ANY trouble while in Ireland. He showed me the friendliness I would have expected from a Doolan, having grown up with Doolan’s in Wisconsin. After Jill took our picture he asked me if we had been to “Coalgap”. I asked him where it was and he circled a minor country intersection on our map, about 8 miles from Kilcormac. He told us that the Doolans come from Coalgap and we must look up Tom Doolan of Blueball, the town adjacent to Coalgap. I left Doolan’s Store feeling great about finding a Doolan in Ireland, making a connection and having my picture taken with a possible relative. I had exceeded my expectation in looking up my Irish heritage. With that, we were off to find Coalgap.

Liam Doolan and John Ottow	Store of Liam and Maura Doolan

We drove down the country road just north of Blueball and drove through the unremarkable intersection that Liam Doolan circled. Jill and I scouted the roads past the intersection in each direction for about a half of a mile and saw typical picturesque Irish Midlands houses and countryside. I almost asked Jill to stop so I could take a picture of a cute cottage in the Coalgap intersection but we were eager to get on to our nights destination of the Dingle Peninsula. I did ask Jill to drive through the Blueball area so we could locate Tom Doolan’s store; perhaps I would stop to take a picture of the store.

We had little difficulty in Blueball finding the large Texaco truckstop and convenience store labeled “Tom Doolan’s Foodstore.” I asked Jill to humor me a few moments while I shook hands with my second Irish Doolan and I went into the truckstop. I asked the cashier where I might find Mr. Doolan and she pointed to a overgrown leprechaun of a man moving about the restaurant part of the truckstop. Again I introduced myself, “Mr. Doolan, I am John Ottow, a Doolan from the United States.” In an instant Tom Doolan was changed from a hard working businessman to our long lost cousin. He dropped what he was doing and told me to follow him to the house so we could meet the family; Jill and I did.

Tom Doolan’s Truckstop	John Ottow and Tom Doolan

The next five hours were wonderful. I was no longer a part-Irish American with a German surname, I was now a Doolan. I was part of the family. I was now a Doolan from Coalgap. One of the first parts of Doolan history that Tom revealed was the meaning of the cultural geographical area known as Coalgap or more appropriately ‘coal gap.’ Like most of Wisconsin, parts of Ireland were covered by glaciers during previous ice ages. The glaciers left a ridge going east-west across Ireland in the area known as Coalgap. This ridge created a barrier to horse drawn wagons carrying coal from the mines of northern Ireland to the populated areas to the south and west, like Limerick and Cohb. In order for the wagons to make it over the gap in this ridge, it was necessary to unload part of the wagonload of coal, and then reload the coal on the south side of the gap. Thus the specific area became known as “Coalgap.” The Doolan ‘Homehouse’ (what Americans would know as a ‘family homestead’) is the cute cottage that has stood at this intersection in Coalgap for hundreds of years; thus Tom and Liam Doolan and their relatives are known as Doolans of Coalgap.

Listening to Tom Doolan is a non-stop Doolan history lesson. In his kitchen and driving around the area we learned the Irish history of our family. At one point Tom disappeared into another room and emerged with an old rifle saying with his thick brogue, “I’m not going to shoot you John. I thought you would like to see a piece of Doolan history.” He then told us how this rifle was hid from the English during their occupation and collection of firearms. It was then lost for nearly 50 years after it was hidden again from the English while Tom’s grandfather was hunting for rabbits. Only recently it was found by local children in bushes where it was left. In an area like Coalgap, it was short time before the gun was returned to its rightful owner.

The Doolan homehouse in Coalgap	John with Doolan rifle

We drove to a sunken shrine and well with a statue of the Virgin Mary. Like so many of the things Tom showed us, they would not be found on any road map and would be driven by unnoticed. All of these points of interest were guarded from cattle by the unending Irish stone walls. To get closer it was necessary to step up and through a small break in the wall, small enough to let people through but not sheep or beef cattle.

Thomas, Tom, Judy and Christa Doolan	Sunken Shrine of the Virgin Mary

As we approached an ancient graveyard, Tom told of how a local woman came by the graveyard a few years ago when it was overgrown and unkempt. After seeing a badger run out of the cemetery with a human skull in its mouth, she took it upon herself to refurbish the graveyard. The woman has done a great job as it is now well trimmed with flowers planted. In this sacred place we found the remains of an old chapel. Inside the chapel is the grave of Father Edward Molloy, hanged and beheaded by the English during penal times for practicing Catholicism. Just outside the chapel is an ancient stone marked “Erected to the Memory of the Doolan Family Gappagolan”. The last word is in the native Irish language, perhaps it is a Gaelic phrase or an early form of the family name.

Erected to the Memory of the Doolan Family Gappagolan	Grave of John Doolan Too difficult to read dates on stone

In Irish “penal” times, the Catholics of Ireland were forced to practice in secret or they would bear the same fate as Father Edward Molloy of the ancient graveyard. Tom drove down a single-lane, rock wall lined country road to show us such a secret place of worship. Like other sites, it was unmarked from the road and only accessible through a small cattle-proof break in the rock wall. We walked down into a hollow that is still invisible from the fields and roads above, just as it would have been in penal times. Here we admired a simple stone altar facing a small clearing that gently sloped up on three sides. It did not take much imagination to see Tom’s distant relatives or mine gathering at this place to talk to God, hidden from the English.

In the quaint nearby village of Mountbolus (Cnocan Bholais in Irish) we were shown the more modern grave of Tom’s grandfather Joseph Doolan, who died in 1928 and was buried with his wife Annie. Tom went on to explain how his parents are also buried in the same plot. It is the tradition in the area to have friends and neighbors dig the grave of a lost one, this being an honor and a show of respect. When Tom’s mother Kathleen died in 2005, twenty-six friends showed up for the honor, as Kathleen was so well known and respected. Tom’s sons Thomas and Christa went on to explain that Joseph Doolan’s bones were inadvertently uncovered during this time and they have pictures of his remains. As expected, the graveyard is in the shadow of the church building where Doolans have worshiped since 1897.

Tom had other interesting stories of Doolan history and remarked “Doolans have always been rebels.” An example was how they used the rafters in a barn belonging to the Doolan homehouse to store rifles to be used in fighting the English “black and tans.” One day when the black and tans came to search the barn an angry mare kicked the barn door shut, frightening the English soldiers and preventing the search. While standing in the front yard of the Homehouse, Tom pointed to the adjoining hills and explained how the locals had planned an ambush of black and tans as they marched through actual gap in the ridge at Coalgap. Some of the local Irish Republicans were hidden in the bushes on either side of the gap and others were at the Doolan Homehouse waiting for the fighting to start. As it turned out the rebels in the bushes lost heart and fled. There was not a fight at Coalgap that day.

As part of our drive through the countryside, we made impromptu stops at a number of Doolan homes. I met his brothers Joseph, Pat and Bill and well as his sister Maureen and also their children if they happened to be home. If a teenage child was sleeping they were woken for introductions. Being a true story teller, Tom heartily repeated the adage I shared with him that I heard from my Grandpa Doolan years ago, “If you look hard enough at your family tree, you will always come up with some sap.” At each introduction Tom would say, “This is our cousin John Ott. He is a Doolan from America.” I was amazed to learn I was the first Doolan from America to visit Coalgap.

Tom presented me with a hurl and slither, a sort of bat and ball used in the Irish National game of Hurling. I learned that the game is a sort of mix between football and hockey. Tom and his sons had a common bond, all being good hurlers. After telling of his son’s recent recognition as a skilled hurler, Tom told of how he represented County Offaly across Ireland when he was young. Tom told of how he missed one opportunity to shine for his county in a big match against County Galway as he was leaving for Canada that day. Tom went on to tell how he worked in Vancouver during the ‘70s as a diesel mechanic and saved enough money to invest in his business ventures on his return to Ireland.

We finished our afternoon with Tom at the dinner table. His wife Judy was still finishing up her appointments in her “beauty shop” in an adjacent room. Thomas and Christa were either or not hungry or too polite to eat with Tom, Jill and me. It was I nice meal of roast beef, potatoes (pronounced ‘pah-day-das’) and cabbage brought over from the truckstop. Their lovely home as well as the truckstop was built by Tom and his sons. The kitchen was kept warm by a peat fire burning in one of the kitchen stoves. Tom mentioned that his house is becoming a “ramble in”, a place where people just walk in without knocking to sit a spell, perhaps get a cup of tea, shot of whiskey or something to eat, just like his mothers home in Coalgap and my grandfathers home in Wisconsin (minus the whiskey). Tom bid us farewell and told us he would try to attend the next Doolan family reunion in Wisconsin.

As of today there is one major question unanswered. Are the Doolans of Maple Grove, Wisconsin related to the Doolans of Coalgap, Ireland? While visiting Tom I had mistakenly reported that my Great-great grandfather, Michael Doolan had left Ireland around 1870. As it turns out, John Doolan, my Great-great-great-great-grandfather had left Ireland around 1832 with his wife, Julie Noonan Doolan and settled in Maple Grove, Wisconsin. Noonan is also a name found in the Offaly / Tullamore / Blueball area, so there is a likely connection. With this information passed on to Tom Doolan, he is going to look for a connection on his side in Ireland while I look at records in Wisconsin for a more exact place of origin in Ireland for John Doolan.

In one sense, it is important to make that connection. Are the Doolans of Maple Grove from the same lineage as the Doolans of Coalgap? In another sense, it does not matter. I returned from Ireland with a good story to share with other Doolans about possible relatives living in our homeland. In a very personally sense, I was lucky to have this rich Irish experience and for at least one afternoon in my life I was a member of the Doolans of Coalgap.