- Home
- Articles
- News
- Our exclusive research into Bram Stoker's family history
- Press information
Why findmypast?
- High quality search
- Our global search has been developed to give you total control of your results in one page, from a town to the whole world.
- Buy credits or subscribe
- We have got you covered with our flexible range of packages and credit offers.
- Learning resources
- Our help documents will guide you through your research, giving you insights and techniques
- Innovative tools to assist you
- Our research tools will help you to define your research
Press information
Pdf of press release "Dracula was Irish not Transylvanian, says historian who last traced Obama’s Irish roots"
Image which started the research
More information on Fiona Fitzsimons and Eneclann
More information on findmypast.ie
Notes on the research
The research completed by Fiona Fitzsimons, Helen Moss and Jennifer Doyle is new research, and is directly relevant to Stoker's 'Dracula'.
The key aspect of our story, is that the O'Donnells were not simply "a landed family", but were the direct descendants of the O'Donnell lords of Tir Conaill. We can trace Bram Stoker's direct descent in 12 generations from Manus O'Donnell (d. 1563), a warrior lord who led a rebellion against Henry VIII. Because we can link Stoker to this main line, its possible to trace Stoker's documented lineage back to the 11th Century.
We also have de facto evidence that Bram Stoker's lineage can be traced back to 561A.D.
In 561 A.D. the O'Donnells became hereditary keepers of the manuscript of St. Columbcille's psalter.
More than 500 years later (ca. 1092) they had a shrine made to hold the manuscript.
The O'Donnell's remained hereditary keepers of the manuscript and shrine, which passed by direct descent through the main O'Donnell line. In 1843 Sir Neal O'Donnell deposited the Manuscript with the Royal Irish Academy, which still holds it today. The shrine can also be viewed in the National Museum of Ireland in Kildare Street.
This deep family history was not previously known, and we would argue that it provides a new context to interpret the text of Dracula. Instead of trying to "shoe-horn" the story of Dracula into a metaphor for sexual repression or sexual deviancy, which are the main current interpretations, the new information we provide allows the text to be read as Stoker originally intended. i.e. Dracula is the story of a decayed aristocracy, with a glorious warrior past, bypassed by history, which now survives hiding in the shadows. The preceding pages are not an exhaustive family history of the Stoker family, and are not intended as such.