In September 1994, the clan returned to Enniscrone to a Certificate of Appreciation from Bord Fáilte, a new tour guide, a trip through famine-era emigration history, and a clan ready to elect its first Taoiseach in four centuries.

The Gathering

Clan members returned from Ireland, Scotland, Canada, the United States and further afield to find that the 1992 rally had been named among the most successful events of the Irish Homecoming Festival — a Certificate of Appreciation for that year’s rally now hangs in the Clan Archive. Registration was again at the Atlantis Hotel in Enniscrone, and among the new faces were Hilda and Jim Sayers from Canada, Brian Duddy, Rick Dowd and Tom Dowds from the United States, and a growing party from Australia.

The Saturday evening session hosted the launch of Conor MacHale’s O’Dubhda Country — A Tour Guide to Tireragh, and a presentation on ‘the Dowds of Dublin’ — a fifteenth-century branch of the family whose descendants included Henry Dowd (emigrated to America in 1639) and, generations later, Mamie Doud Eisenhower, First Lady of the United States.

Tours & Sites

• Culkin’s Emigration Museum at Dromore West — the very building from which emigrant ancestors would have bought a shipping ticket
• Strokestown Park Famine Museum and Foxford Woollen Mills
• Roscommon, burial place of Daithí, the 5th-century High King from whom the Uí Fiachrach descend
• A return to the Céide Fields; Yeats Country; and Parke’s Castle

Decisions of the Clan

The 1994 meeting set the voting rules that would elect the first Taoiseach in 400 years. Nominations required a seconder and the nominee’s acceptance. The member list was approved for publication. The elected Chief would use the title O’Dubhda, Taoiseach of Tireragh, with ‘O’Dubhda’ as the official surname on clan documentation. The next rally was set for 11 – 14 September 1997, when the election would take place.

The weekend ended with a banquet in the hall of Belleek Castle, the castle now a private heritage hotel housing medieval armour and artefacts recovered from the Spanish Armada. Special thanks were recorded for Paddy Tuffy, Sheelagh Rafter and Pamela Cawley of the local organising committee.