1609 onwards: Transplantation to famine to migration
Though the leading O'Dowlings were forceably relocated or transplanted by Cromwell's agents, a number of the sept stayed in their homeland in Leix and in the years that followed some descendants of this group spread Eastward to counties Carlow, Kilkenny and Wicklow. Those individuals transplanted found themselves in Tarbert on the border of North Kerry and West Limerick in Munster. The generations that followed remained in and around this area or over time came back to Leix. The name or pronunciation Dooling is believed to be a Munster variant of Dowling and so it is likely that the Doolings of today are by and large descended from this group transplanted to Munster.

For a century and a half, covering the next six generations, information on the Dowlings and Doolings is scattered and very limited. It is not until the middle of the eighteenth century that evidence emerges of a specific line of the Dowling family who may be related to our modern day Dooling family. This particular group of descendants were residents of Freshford in Kilkenny, very close to the border with Laois as early as the 1790s when James Dowling, born about 1772, was living with his wife Alicia. On June 5th 1797, Alicia gave birth to a boy, christened John Dowling in Freshford.

Twenty seven years later, on 23rd January 1824, the now grown-up John Dowling and his wife Betty became proud parents of their own son, Thomas Dowling also in Freshford, Kilkenny. It is now believed that this Thomas Dowling was later married to Elizabeth Phelan from the neighbouring townland of Aherney, a townland which straddled Kilkenny and Queens county and shortly after, in 1846, Elizabeth gave birth to a son, Daniel.

Not much is known about Thomas Dowling (also pronounced Doolan or Dooling) other than the facts that he married Elizabeth, was father to Daniel, was a stonemason and was dead by 1851. It is reasonable to speculate though that in starting his new family at the begining of the great famine and with his soon-to-be young widow and son emigrating to England by 1851, he was very likely a victim of that terrible disaster.