County Sligo

We drove from Bray to Ballymote, County Sligo yesterday...First stop, Doddy's Pub in the middle of town. John Doddy met us there and we tried to figure out if we were related to each other. We didn't have a name of a Doddy to give him so we thought it was a deadend to finding our ancestors...because our grandfather was born in Austria. We came back later in the day and met Jane, his daughter. Having a pint of Guiness, a fellow named Ciaran sat down next to us and John asked him if he knew how the Doddys would have ended up in Austria...he knew the answer...and Aristorcrat named Taffe came to Ireland to marry an Irish Catholic girl and took her back to Austria with an entourage...she became homesick so he built an entire replica of Ballymote Castel for her in Austria. Ciaran said that is probably how the Doddys arrived in Austria. There are many Doddys in this region. We passed the Doddy transport service earlier. At breakfast the owner heard us talking about the castle in Austria and he told us his boss, a politican, wrote a book about the history of the Ballymote Castle in Austria and he will bring me a copy to read after we get back to the B&B later today. Today we are spending the day in Sligo, a town along the ocean...and of course it is raining again. We are going to Derry tommorw so we will try to update from there. Take Care! The Doddys