Some Dooleys in St. Louis: Party and Recovery

Some e-mail I sent to family a few years back:


Hi, everyone.

It's a common goal in genealogy to trace your family history back just far enough to find a connection with the family tree of Charlemagne. I think that just about everyone with European ancestry is somehow tied to him, so if you can find the connection you can claim that you're related to royalty.

Well, here's the best I've come up with so far ...

Our Dooley ancestors came from Callan, Co. Kilkenny, Ireland to Dubuque, Iowa in the late 1830's. One branch of the family, the only that I know of with the name of Dooley, settled in Saint Louis around 1860. ... [Our parents] had Dooley 2nd cousins in St. Louis ... One of these Dooley cousins, Joseph, married Edmer Anheuser, a granddaughter to Eberhardt Anheuser, the original owner of what later became Anheuser Busch brewery. (By 1829, Joseph remarried, and I don't know what became of Edmer Anheuser.) So there's our link to American "royalty".


[Follow on e-mail:]


Hi, again.

This is so ironic, you may not believe it's true.

So, the other day I sent a message about how we're connected to Budweiser through Joseph Dooley, a cousin in St. Louis. Joseph had a twin brother, William, who married Cornelia Howe. Cornelia's father was the inventor of TUMS (the famous antacid)! William was the Secretary of Dr. Howe's company, the Lewis-Howe Company. So apparently the Dooleys were well prepared for both the party and the recovery.

Another interesting coincidence: The William & Cornelia Dooley house is now part of the Webster University campus (I think it houses the English Dept.). The Dooleys must have been living there when [private] went to school there (previously Webster College) in the early '40s. It was "The Dooley House" when the University bought it in about 1984, and has now been renamed Pearson house. The Howe house, next door, is now also owned by the University. These houses, and Webster U., are located in Webster Groves, near St. Louis.