Overview

The Dooleys of Richmond is the biography of a dynamic and philanthropic Irish Catholic immigrant family who came to Virginia in the nineteenth century. While most Irish Catholic immigrants of the period were poor and illiterate, John and Sarah Dooley possessed both sophistication and capital. He established a large hat manufacturing enterprise and became a leader in business, education, and politics in Virginia. Mary Lynn Bayliss recounts the family’s fortunes during their prosperous antebellum years, John and his sons’ service in the Confederate army, John’s exploits as leader of the Richmond Ambulance Committee, and the loss of the entire Dooley retail and manufacturing operations during the final days of the Civil War. The Dooleys’ son James, a leading Richmond lawyer and philanthropist, devoted half a century to developing railroad networks across the United States and became a key figure in the industrialization of the New South. He and his wife, Sallie, built Maymont, the famed Gilded Age estate that remains a major attraction of Richmond. The story of the Dooleys is a fascinating window on southern society and the people who shaped its grand and turbulent history.

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9780813939988

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Mary Lynn Bayliss has given us a lively telling of the little-known story of an Irish Catholic family that played a significant part in the history of Richmond, Virginia, before, during, and after the Civil War. Bayliss captures both the dramatic public events and the emotions of private life in this joint biography of John Dooley and James Dooley, father and son, and their families.</p>--John T. Kneebone, Virginia Commonwealth University, author of <i>Southern Liberal Journalists and the Issue of Race, 1920 1944</i>

Author Information

Mary Lynn Bayliss, a writer and lecturer, has published work in Virginia Cavalcade, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Dictionary of Virginia Biography, and Encyclopedia Virginia.

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