Durrus, County Cork, Ireland

[Published February 28, 2010]

Recently I had the unexpected pleasure of being contacted by Pat Crowley of Dublin, Ireland.  Mr. Crowley has become an expert on the history of Durrus, Ireland.  Durrus is the area that our ancestral grandfather Thomas Dukelow / Ducklow emigrated from.  Mr. Crowley has done much research, writing and photographing Durrus.  He also has friends with the 

Sheepshead Peninsula, near Durrus, County Cork, Ireland

Source: Pat Crowley, Dalkey (Dublin), Ireland

Dukelow surname that live in the Durrus area.  Mr. Crowley has offered to share information to aid in the quest to find a solid link back to the Dukelow Clan of Ireland.  Pat has provided tables of birth and death information, photographs of grave markers in Durrus cemeteries, and a text on Durrus history that includes references to Dukelows.

Alas, I wish I could report a breakthrough.  Not yet. But the information is so tantalizing. Especially so because the given names of many of the Durrus families overlap with the names used by Thomas in naming his children:  John, Thomas, Mary Ann, Elizabeth, Charles, Richard, James, Peter, Fanny and even Lucinda.  This gives me encouragement that eventually we will find a link of this modern-day Dukelows back to Thomas and his father.  As often happens in research, Mr. Crowley has given me another contact in Ireland who has worked the Ireland Dukelow family tree, which should include the Dukelows of Durrus.  Stay tuned!

Mr. Crowley has given me permission to share some of the photos that he has taken around the Durrus area.  They provide a taste of the architecture of new and old buildings that make up Durrus today.

Photographs of buildings in and around Durrus, Ireland:

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Footnote: Esther Northfield Ducklow, Grant Dukelow Brown, and Clayton Swanton have independently spent many hours and much effort in trying find Dukelow links to family in Ireland.  Grant Brown and Clayton Swanton have each traveled to Ireland, but did not make a significant break-though in finding a documented connection.    Up to this point, no information was been found that specifically connects our Thomas Dukelow / Ducklow back to the Durrus Dukelows.   Finding a link might be called the search for the "Holly Grail" of the Ducklow genealogy quest.

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