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Charlotte Stoker’s Mayo family connections

10 July 2012 · The Mayo News

Liamy Mac Nally

Bram Stoker Estate account

Estate summary

Liamy Mac Nally reports research by Fiona Fitzsimons, Helen Moss and Jennifer Doyle into Bram Stoker’s maternal ancestry, published in Irish Roots in 2012. The column connects Charlotte’s Blake and O’Donnell family with Garracloon near Cong and Newport, and discusses General George Blake and the family’s relationship to the Cathach manuscript. It then considers how knowledge of this inheritance might offer a reading of Dracula through aristocratic decline and a remembered warrior past. The genealogical reporting and the interpretation of the novel are distinct: the column does not demonstrate that a particular family story determined Stoker’s plot or establish his intended meaning.

Complete Mayo News column recovered in the Internet Archive capture of 1 July 2018. Original page date: 10 July 2012; byline printed Liamy Mac Nally. The column cites Irish Roots 2012, number 2, and named Eneclann researchers. This record verifies what the column reports, not every genealogical or medieval-history claim. No authorial-intention claim is adopted. Copyrighted column linked, not reproduced.

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Charlotte Stoker, Bram’s mother.
Charlotte Stoker, Bram’s mother. Family portrait supplied by the Estate; contextual illustration of the family-history column.Courtesy of the Bram Stoker Estate.