Robert Foster Kennedy Draws Some Extreme Conclusions

Robert Foster Kennedy in later life. From a
Russian Neurology Site

Robert Foster Kennedy was married twice and died in New York in 1952. 

Some of the more controversial views that he held in the latter part of his career are summarised in his Wikipedia entry:

Kennedy supported widespread eugenical sterilization and castration.

At the 1941 annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, he called for the extermination of incurably severely retarded children over the age of five. His goal was to relieve "the utterly unfit" and "nature's mistakes" of the "agony of living" and to save their parents and the state the cost of caring for them. He concluded, "So the place for euthanasia, I believe, is for the completely hopeless defective; nature's mistake; something we hustle out of sight, which should not have been seen at all." 

Foster Kennedy, while professor of neurology at Cornell University in New York, argued that all children with proven mental retardation ("feeblemindedness") over the age of five should be put to death.

These views earned him a mention in a much later article devoted mainly to such practices by the Nazis, and with the central topic of psychiatric genocide.

Neither Robert Foster Kennedy nor his first cousin, Sir Richard Dawson Bates would win too many plaudits for political correctness in our own day and age. Nonetheless, they certainly made an impact in their times.

Robert Foster Kennedy Saves The Free World

From his Wikipedia Entry

Robert Foster Kennedy was the youngest of the children of William Archer Kennedy and Hessie Foster Dill. He was a first cousin of Sir Richard Dawson Bates, and a fourth cousin of Hetty Jane Owen. He became a neurologist, first in London and subsequently in New York.

In an illustrious career, he succeeded in giving his name to the Foster-Kennedy syndrome, the Kaplan-Kennedy test and Kennedy's Syndrome. He was one of the first doctors to define shell shock during the First World War when he was working in France near the front. According to his entry in the Dictionary of Ulster Biography, his direct experience of the war destroyed his religious faith.

He returned to New York after the war, and became Professor of Neurology at Cornell. Amongst his patients were one Winston Churchill who had managed to collide with a taxi on a visit to New York in 1931. Needless to say, Churchill came off worse than the taxi. The great tactician and strategist had overlooked the fact that the Americans drove on the opposite side to the British. It seems that Churchill was quite severely injured and shaken up. He now had a scalp wound, two cracked ribs and pleurisy as well as shock and depression to contend with. Nonetheless, he was out of hospital in a week, and in this era of prohibition had secured himself exactly the prescription he needed to recuperate in the form of a note that stated:

This is to certify that the post-accident concussion of Hon. Winston S. Churchill necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits especially at meal times.

Churchill himself was aware that he had had a narrow escape and kept in contact with Kennedy right into the Second World War when he sought his opinion as to whether America would enter the war. 

For those fond of such scenarios, Churchill's accident and Kennedy's prompt treatment might just make for one of those great 'what if?' moments in history.

Kennedy also treated the US President, Franklin D Roosevelt. 

Hessie Foster Dill and William Archer Kennedy

Hessie Foster Dill was born in 1850. She was the fifth great-grandchild of Susanna West, and the last of those great-grandchildren to be born in Susanna's lifetime. She died in 1931. 

She married William Archer Kennedy on 7th September, 1871. 

According to The Dictionary of Ulster Biography, William was a factory manager in the linen industry, and the family lived on the Upper Shankhill Road in Belfast. Just after the birth of the youngest of their fifth children, William took the family to Poland to take up a post as manager of a linen factory. Hessie died of scarlet fever just months after they relocated and William sent whichever children were with them back to Ireland, to 3 Fisherwick Place in Belfast, there to live with their grandparents, Robert Foster Dill and Catherine Haughton Rentoul.

The original Linen Hall Library in 1888, shortly before its demolition
and replacement with Belfast City Hall.
From:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linen_Hall_Library

It should be borne in mind that by the time the First World War broke out, Belfast was the biggest producer of linen in the world.

The Linen Hall library where Thomas Russell worked, and later Reginald Blackwood laboriously compiled family trees of the Hadzors, Wests, and so many others, owes its name to the association of Belfast with linen.

Francis Nesbit Dill

Francis Nesbit Dill (1847-1901) was the fourth child of Robert Foster Dill and Catherine Haughton Rentoul, and a great-grandchild of Susanna West, who was still living on the Hill in Downpatrick at the time of his birth. There is a record for Francis an engineer in the Admiralty Records for 1878.

Francis was clearly named after his Uncle, Francis Nesbit Dill who had died in 1846 aged just thirty in Victoria, Hong Kong. This Francis was another doctor, and the founder of the China Medico-Chirurgical Society:

The excerpt below is from their Transactions for the years 1845-1846:

The younger Francis died in 1901, unmarried.

The Ghost of Sir Richard Dawson Bates

And now to a curious postscript, reported in the Irish Central News on October 27th, 2009. 

The article stated that a Belfast family had been hearing strange sounds in their house, and seen human-shaped figures, heard breathing and human cries in empty rooms and have smelt tobacco smoke, amongst other curious and unexplained events. 

So persistent were these occurrences that the family called in a professional demonologist to investigate. 

The explanation? 

The Fitzpatricks of north Belfast say that the ghost of the controversial Unionist politician Richard Dawson Bates, who died over 60 years ago, may be haunting them because they are living in his former house – and they are Catholic. 

The report proceeded to note that Bates lived in the house for thirty years from the turn of the twentieth century, and was a chain smoker with a strong hatred of Catholics. 



The Irish Times in its version of the story quoted Chris Ryder on Dawson Bates, summarizing Bates in forthright terms as: 

 …an uncompromising bigot who regarded all Catholics as nationalists and, as such, enemies to be distrusted and neutralised in every conceivable way. 

Whatever his failings, Dawson Bates thus occupies a certain pride of place in the Hetty Jane Owen family history, as the only ancestor to return from the grave.

Jean Victor Bates

Of the sisters of Sir Richard Dawson Bates, and also a fourth cousin of Hetty Jane Owen, mention should also be made of Jane Bates. Jane shared her brothers’ passion for unionist politics, and became an author, writing under the nom de plume of Jean Victor Bates. Her books included:



Our Allies and Enemies in the Near East (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., ca. 1918), contributions by Edward Carson

Sir Edward Carson, Ulster Leader (London: J. Murray, 1921), contributions by Arthur James Balfour and James Craig Craigavon

Jean also drove an ambulance in Serbia in the First World War, as well as consorting with these notables of the day. 

(Thanks are due to Ms. Helen Johnston for alerting me to Jean Victor Bates, and the daughters of Richard Dawson Bates and Mary Dill).

The Children of Sir Richard Dawson Bates and Jessie Muriel Cleland

The son of Sir Richard Dawson Bates and Jessie Muriel Cleland was Major Sir John Dawson Bates (1921-1998). He was the second Baronet of Magherabuoy and married Mary Murray Hault in 1953. 

Sir John was a fifth cousin of Hetty Jane Owen’s children, Harold and Olwen Eldridge.

Magherabuoy House. Sir Richard Dawson Bates, the fourth cousin of Hetty Jane Owen, lived here from 1934 to 1947. The house is about twenty minutes’ drive from Giants’ Causeway, and is now a hotel.

Of the three children of Sir John and Mary, we might just pause to note that Sir Richard Dawson Hoult Bates (born 1956) is the third Baronet. He is the sixth cousin of all the children of Harold Eldridge, the son of Hetty Jane Owen. He married Harriet Scaramella in 2001.

Sir Richard Dawson Bates Appraised

The Prime Minister, Lord Craigavon, second left front and Sir Dawson Bates, Minister of Home Affairs, fourth left front, with members of Lisburn Urban Council at the War Memorial in the Castle Gardens about 1930. Text and photo from: http://lisburn.com/war_memorials/lisburn_memorial.htm

The Oxford Index characterizes Dawson as a Unionist apparatchik, and summarises the final years of his career as follows:

He was awarded his baronetcy in 1937, but clung to office until 1943. An unpopular and inefficient wartime minister, Bates retained the enervated style of the Craig administration; he survived a parliamentary vote of censure in July 1942, but was increasingly regarded as a political liability. He remained vigorously suspicious of Catholic influence to the end.

Dawson died in 1949 at Butleigh House, near Glastonbury, Somerset. He had come under financial strain in later years and constantly needed police security. He is buried at Ballywillan Church of Ireland.

Meanwhile, the Republican view of Dawson Bates is represented in this 2005 entry by an Irish blogger:

'Sir' Richard Dawson Bates was a known bigot, and apparently took it as a compliment when it was said of him in Stormont (by a Senior Civil Servant) - " (He) has such a prejudice against Catholics that he made it clear to his Permanent Secretary that he did not want his most juvenile clerk or typist , if a Papist (Catholic) assigned for duty to his ministry ." In 1935 ,however , he seemed to believe that he could treat everyone like shit (pardon the language) regardless of their religion - 

- on 18th June that year (1935) , 'Sir' Bates issued an Order banning all parades , not just those with a Republican/Nationalist 'flavour' : the Orange Order objected and told Bates and his people that it was their intention to hold a parade on the 23rd June (1935) and that said parade would be going ahead . Bates was not pleased - it was one thing to trample over the rights of the 'Papists' , but the Orange Order were his own people ....... 

That, at any rate, is one perspective on Hetty Jane Owen's fourth cousin, and direct descendant of Godfrey West and Elizabeth Hadzor.

Sir Richard Dawson Bates

From the History of Ireland website 

With Sir Richard Dawson Bates, all the old internecine Irish conflicts, resentments and fears resurface, wrapped up in a complex and committed personality that could never remotely be described as tolerant. A committed Ulster Unionist, Dawson had roles to play in the organization of Ulster Day and the signing of the Ulster covenant in 1912, as well as in the Larne gun-running operation of 1914, when the Unionists smuggled in arms to be used if necessary in fighting against the imposition of home rule.

In 1918, Dawson, along with Sir Edward Carson, helped establish the Ulster Unionist Labour Association, a Protestant, and specifically anti-socialist and anti-republican trade union movement. This sounds contradictory and almost certainly was. 

What the Association did help breed however was sectarianism. 
As the Belfast economy went into a downturn, the Protestants singled out the Catholics for moving into Protestant areas, and taking away jobs. Sectarian tension and retaliation followed, and local protection militia were formed. And of course as if this was not enough, the 1917 Russian revolution had now struck enough fear into establishment figures like Dawson Bates, that those with vaguely socialist notions were also to be excoriated as purveyors of division and disunity. The Wikipedia entry for Dawson Bates (albeit hardly neutral in discourse) portrays him touring the country intent on portraying all Roman Catholics as traitors. In office, he was accused of gerrymandering and intervening to ensure that Protestants who attacked Catholics were not punished. He was a keen proponent and supporter of the Civil Authorities Act of 1922, which restricted civil liberties and passed all kinds of arbitrary powers into the hands of the authorities, which he was then only too happy to use.

Mary Dill and Richard Dawson Bates.

Returning to Ireland, Mary Dill (1845-1931) was the third of the nine children of Robert Foster Dill and Catherine Haughton Rentoul, and thereby another great grand-daughter of Susanna West, and  third cousin once removed of Hetty Jane Owen. Mary married Richard Dawson Bates, a Belfast solicitor in 1872. 

Mary and Richard had two sons, John Bates, who died young, and Sir Richard Dawson Bates (1876-1949), and three daughters, Jane, Catherine and Mary.

Dawson Bates and Jessie Muriel Cleland
Photo copyright of The National Portrait Gallery

Sir Richard Dawson Bates, their son, was thus a fourth cousin of Hetty Jane Owen, and if there is a reincarnation of the spirit of original West settlers to be found in later generations, this is the candidate.

Sir Richard was born in Strandtown, Belfast in and died in Somerset, England. He married Jessie Muriel Cleland, daughter of Sir Charles John Cleland (K.B.E.)  in 1920. Sir Richard was usually known simply as Dawson Bates. 

In terms of the bare bones of his career, he variously held the offices of Justice of the Peace for County Down, Deputy Lieutenant of Belfast and Privy Counsellor. 

He was Unionist M.P for East Belfast between 1921 and 1929, and for Belfast Victoria between 1929 and 1943. He was Minister for Home Affairs for Northern Ireland between 1921 and 1943. 

He was awarded an OBE in 1919, knighted in 1921, and created 1st Baronet Bates, of Magherabuoy, Londonderry in 1937. 

Quite an illustrious career on the surface, but as we shall see, one not short of controversy.

Lieutenant John Pengelly Dill

From Invizyon Website:

8 Sept. 1915

Births - at Durbans, Romsey, Hants. On 30th August the wife of the late Captain Robert Foster Dill, DSO, 129th DCO Baluchhis, of a son.

The two children of Robert Foster Dill (1883-1915) and Margaret Douglas Pengelly (1882-1970)were:

i) Robert Hastings Dill (1914-1995)

ii) John Pengelly Dill (1915-1941)

John is the child who was born after his father’s death at Neuve-Chapelle, and the two brothers would be the fifth cousins of Hetty Jane Owen’s children, Olwen and Harold Eldridge. 

Robert Hastings Dill was born in June 1914 in Mussoorie, Bengal, India, probably just before his father departed for France. He was educated at Marlborough College, and Sandhurst and immediately followed in his father’s footsteps by joining the Indian Army and attaining the rank of major. He married Barbara Angel Horton in 1942 in Indore. 

Around the time of, or after, Indian independence, they returned to England and settled in the West Country. Robert died in Barnstable, Devon in 1995. The couple had two children (sixth cousins of Hetty Jane Owen’s grandchildren) and at least three grandchildren. 

John Pengelly Dill was not so fortunate, as the following excerpt from a history of the Battle of Pink Hill in Crete in 1941 records: 

The Germans apparently airlifted John Pengelly Dill to Athens, but to no avail. Margaret Douglas Pengelly thus lost her husband in the first war and her son in the second.

Testaments of Youth

Of the other Dill brothers, Marcus Graham Dill, who met John Rowe Dill just before his death, survived the conflagration, and pursued his medical career in Edinburgh. He died in 1966. He was married to Elizabeth Barnwell. They had no children.

Alfred Vincent Dill graduated from Edinburgh University and also became a doctor, yet another family member following in the footsteps of Seneca and John Hadzor so many years before.

It is not clear which of the Dill sisters it would have been who worked on the hospital ship,  as a V.A.D (Voluntary Aid Detachment) nurse, bringing the wounded back from France. 

But, of these sisters (Agnes, Louisa, and Hessy Foster), Agnes Rose Dill (1887-1927) eventually married Edward Wickham Jones and moved to South Norwood. They had a daughter, Shirley Wickham Jones, who was born in 1924. 

With the Dill sisters as well as brothers involved in the war, the story starts to look quite similar to the memories so vividly and movingly recounted by another V.A.D nurse, Vera Brittain in Testament of Youth, and detailing her journey from unquestioning patriotism to pacifism. We do not know from what shifting perspectives Samuel Marcus Dill and Agnes Rowe viewed the Great War as it proceeded, but Brittain's work gives valuable clues as to how those perspectives changed both at the Front and at home, as the war just ran on and on, and the casualty figures mounted to a level never seen before in the history of human conflict. 

Sepoy Khudadad Khan

Both Robert Foster Dill and John Rowe Dill are buried at the Cabaret-Rouge British Cemetery, Souchez. The newspaper archives do not tell us all the story though.

Khudadad Khan (1888-1971)

In the case of Robert Foster Dill, he was severely wounded in the first battle of Yypres in an engagement that has become famous for other reasons entirely, namely, the award of the first Victoria Cross to a Muslim, Sepoy Khudadad Khan. This incident is reported on The British Library Website Blog  and reads as follows:


On 31 October 1914, the 129th Baluchis were engaged in heavy fighting around the Belgian village of Hollebeke, in the course of which two machine gun crews of the Regiment were cut off. One of the machine guns was destroyed by a shell, and its crew killed or wounded. A short time later, the British officer, Captain Dill was severely wounded. Despite being wounded himself, Khudadad kept working his gun with the other men of his gun detachment until they were rushed by the enemy in overpowering numbers. All were killed except Khudadad, who was left for dead. Amazingly Khudadad survived this attack, and under the cover of darkness was able to crawl back to the safety of the Regiment.

Khudadad lived on until 1971, one of 400,000 Muslim soldiers who fought for the British Empire in the war, their contributions to be almost entirely forgotten in future years. 

Robert Foster Dill meanwhile recovered from his wounds, only to die at Neuve-Chapelle. Of the 4447 members of the 129th Punjab regiment, 3585 casualties were suffered in just this one engagement. John Rowe Dill met his own end not far away, just a few months later.

Lieutenant John Rowe Dill

From the 1914-1918 InvizionZone Website:


11 June 1915 Announcement

News reached Alloway on Tuesday, that Lt J. R. Dill, 69th Punjabis Indian Army, had been killed in action in France on Sunday June the 6th.

John Rowe Dill (1889-1915)      

Lt. John Rowe Dill was the third son of the Very Rev Marcus Dill, D. D., Alloway, Ex Moderator of the Church of Scotland. He was born on the 3rd of December 1889. Having received his education at Marlborough College and the Royal Military College Sandhurst, he obtained his first commision in 1910, when he was attached to the 2nd Battalion North Staffordshire Regiment. In 1911 he joined the 69th Punjabis, in which he was recently appointed Adjutant.

When war was declared he accompanied his regiment to Egypt, and along with them, he arrived in the North of France, where a day or two afterwards he fell in the service of his country.

His brother Captain Robert Foster Dill, DSO, 129th Baluchis, was killed near the same place early in April, and both are buried in the same cemetery, near the trenches.

The Very Rev Dr. Dill has two other sons in the service, Captain Graham Dill of the R. A. M. C. and Mr. Alfred Dill in the Officers Training Corps, and Miss Dill is engaged on a Hospital Ship bringing the wounded from France. Captain Graham Dill met his brother, the late Lt. J. R. Dill, for the first time in 5 years only a day or two before he was killed.

As we can see, at least five of the Irish-Scots children of Samuel Marcus Dill and Catherine Haughton Rentoul had willingly signed up to service in the British army, following in the path of Lieutenants John and Seneca Hadzor almost exactly two hundred years before.  

Captain Robert Foster Dill

From the 1914-1918 InvizionZone Website:

15 April 1915 Announcement

Robert Foster Dill (1883-1915)

It is officially announced that Capt. Robert Foster Dill, DSO, 129th DCO Baluchis, Indian Army, was killed in action on 11th April. He was the second son of the Very Rev. Marcus Dill, D.D., ex-Moderator of the Church of Scotland. Having received his education at Marlborough College and the RMC Sandhurst, he obtained a commission in the Indian Army in 1904 and was gazetted to his Captaincy in 1912. On the outbreak of the war, his regiment, along with the Lahore Division, arrived in France and it has since then been at the front. In Oct., when fighting in the trenches, he was wounded, but in a few weeks he was able to return to his military duty. For his brilliant conduct on that occasion he was mentioned in dispatches of the C-in-C, and His Majesty bestowed upon him the D.S.O. Capt. Dill was married in 1913 to Margaret Douglas, daughter of General Pengelley, RMA.

Robert Foster Dill was a x2 great grandson of Susanna West of Downpatrick.

The Dill Family Go to War

The last dinner menu for first-class passengers on the Titanic, including Arthur Rowe,comprised oysters, filet mignon, poached salmon, chicken Lyonnaise, foie gras, roasted pigeon, lamb with mint sauce and Punch Romaine, a palate-cleansing ice flavored with oranges and drenched in champagne.

For Agnes Rowe, the years following the loss of her twin brother on the Titanic were not to get any easier. Whilst her husband, the Reverend Samuel Marcus Dill attended to matters spiritual as Moderator of the Church of Scotland, at least two of her sons embarked on military careers, which took them in the first instance to India, there to experience first hand the glories of the British Raj. 

Once war broke out in Europe however, it was not long before the overstretched British army felt the need to call on the forces from distant parts of the empire to reinforce their frontlines in France and elsewhere. And so they did, to be joined in due course by more of the Dill children. 

In uncovering the story of the Dill sons, military records have been of some help, but the main source is from a discussion forum about the Duke of Connaught's Baluchis where the activities and fate of the Dill brothers has been pieced together by a number of contributors, using newspaper archives of the time. Further information is also available on the OurHeroes website. 

The Children of Samuel Marcus Dill and Agnes Rowe

Index of wills.
Samuel Marcus Dill was the executor
of the wills of both his mother,
(the grand-daughter of Susanna West) and father.

Samuel Marcus Dill, the second child of Robert Foster Dill and Catherine Haughton Rentoul was educated in Geneva and Belfast, and graduated finally as a Doctor of Divinity from Belfast Theological College. 

He was the Minister at Alloway, Ayrshire, and by 1912, the very year the Titanic sank, had become Moderator of the Church of Scotland. 

He married Agnes Rowe in 1878 in Toxteth, Liverpool, and their nine children were as follows:

i) Agnes Edith Dill (1879-1881). Born and died in Balleymena, County Antrim, Ireland.

ii) Kathleen Norah Dill (1880-1965). Born in Ballymena, County Antrim and died in Peebles, Scotland.

iii) Marcus Graham Dill (1882-1966). Born in Alloway, Ayrshire, died in Edinburgh.

iv) Robert Foster Dill (1883-1915). Born in Alloway, Ayrshire, died in France. 

v) Agnes Rosa Dill (1887-1927). Born in Alloway, Ayrshire, died in Upper Norwood, Surrey.

vi) John Rowe Dill (1889-1915). Born in Alloway, Ayrshire, and died in France.

vii) Louisa L M Dill (1892-1973). Born in Alloway, Ayrshire.

viii) Hessy Foster Dill (1892-1975). Born in Alloway, Ayrshire, and died in Croydon, Surrey. She married William Jackson.

ix) Alfred Vincent Dill (1894-????). Born in Alloway, Ayrshire, and was living in Lanark, Lanarkshire in 1976.

These children were all fourth cousins of Hetty Jane Owen.

Samuel Marcus Dill and Agnes Rowe

The loss of Alfred Rowe on the Titanic must have stayed with his twin sister, Agnes Graham Rowe (died 1934) for the rest of her days, and indeed with her nine children, all of whom were old enough at the time to appreciate the magnitude of the disaster. 

It is a fair assumption that the family will have sought comfort in religion, not least since Agnes was married to the Reverend Samuel Marcus Dill (1843-1924) of Belfast, great-grandson of Susanna West,  third cousin once removed of Hetty Jane Owen, and the second child of Robert Foster Dill and Catherine Haughton Rentoul.

Samuel Marcus Dill and Agnes Rowe had by 1891 transplanted themselves away from Ireland to Alloway, Ayrshire, Scotland, there to proceed with ministering to the spiritual needs of the Scottish Presbyterian community. 

It will have been there that the news will have reached them about the calamity that had just taken place in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Titanic Centre, July 2016

There’s no denying it. The Belfast Titanic Centre is a highly impressive achievement that brings to life the tragic but legendary fate of what was supposed to have been the world’s greatest ocean liner. It is a multimedia experience that pays tribute to the victims whilst plotting an atmospheric course through the complex cause and effect sequence that led to the final disaster. And if the gift shop with its array of Titanic souvenirs leaves a somewhat bitter taste in the mouth – as if the Centre is somehow profiting from the immense loss of life that occurred, well, this must be forgiven in the face of the commercial realities of sustaining the project.

The Titanic set off on its maiden voyage from Southampton on April 10th 2012. Travelling first class was one Alfred G. Rowe. Born in Lima, Peru in 1853, Alfred was part of a widely-travelled family of British merchants and landowners. His mother was from Glasgow, whilst his father was born to British parents in Jamaica. 

In 1856, the family returned to England and settled in the Liverpool area. Alfred though continued his adventures, and bought up a ranch in Texas. He was thus a seasoned Atlantic traveller, attending to business and family both in the USA and England. For five days, he will have enjoyed all the considerable luxury and entertainment that the Titanic had to offer, until on April 15th, 1912, the great ship, the pride of the Belfast shipyards, collided with an iceberg and sank. Over 1500 passengers met their deaths in the icy waters of the Atlantic that day, amongst them Alfred Rowe.  

Susanna West Dill and John McCrea

The first child of Robert Foster Dill and Catherine Haughton Rentoul was Susanna West Dill (1841-1931). Susanna was named after her great-grandmother, Susanna West, who was still alive and living in Downpatrick at this point.

She married John McCrea, who died in Belfast on the 18th December, 1876, aged thirty-seven. John was a doctor. Susanna was still resident in Windsor Ward, Belfast, County Antrim, in 1911. 

They had five children, all fourth cousins of Hetty Jane Owen.

i. Robert Foster McCrea (1871-) was born in Belfast, At the time of the 1911 census, he was living in Donaghdee, County Down.

ii. John McCrea (1872-) was born in Belfast. It is possible but not certain that he emigrated to Watertown, Massachusetts, USA.

iii. Mary Moreland McCrea (1873-1952). She was both born and died in Belfast.

iv. Samuel Marcus McCrea (1875-). He was born in Belfast and may have married into the Boyd family.

v. Hugh Moreland McCrea  (1877-1941) married Kate Rose Hannen (1876-1955). He was born in Belfast and died in 20 Devonshire Place, Marylebone, London, England, He married Kate on August 22 1908 at St Mary’s church, Wergrave, Berkshire. 

Sir Nicholas Hannen was another brother of
Charles Hannen. He was also a judge,
and was consul-general in Shanghai between
1891 and 1897. He was educated at the
City of London School. One of his sons,
Nicholas 'Beau' Hannen went on to be
a successful stage and film actor.
Such were the circles
that Hugh Moreland McCrea,
fourth cousin of Hetty-Jane Owen moved in.

Kate was the daughter of Charles Hannen and niece of Lord Hannen, the famous English judge. 

Hugh was also a doctor and was awarded an OBE. 

More curiously, he seems also to have taken out in 1927 a patent for a new device for helping practitioners improve their billiards skills, the abstract for which follows below:

303,218. McCrea, H. M. Oct. 6, 1927. Billiards and croquet practising appliances.-A device for use in practising billiards, croquet and similar ball games comprises a semi-circular disc or plate a having markings of angular degrees thereon and formed at the centre of the arc with carrying means for a pair of hinged arms b, b<1> which are adapted for independent angular movement over the face of the disc or plate to determine the angle and to indicate a sighting line and the position for the ball in play. An indicator arm d is rigidly attached to the disc a or to the hinged joint of the arms b, b<1>. Stops c enable the arms b, b<1> to be set in alignment. Suitable friction devices hold the arms in their adjusted positions. The arms may have hinged or telescopic extensions. In using the device, e.g. to play a half-ball stroke off the red ball into a pocket, the arms b, b<1> are set as shown at, say 146‹ and the hinge is placed in contact with the red ball g so that the indicator arm d coincides with the diametrical centre line of the ball g and the angularly-set arm b points to the centre of the pocket h. The arm b<1> now indicates the line of aim for the white ball i. After taking aim along the arm b<1>, the device is removed and the stroke may be made.

Hugh and Kate had two children:

i. Catherine Fanny McCrea (1909-) married John Denman Finlaison (1903-1953). Catherine was born in Paddington, London. They had three children.

ii. Betty Joan McCrea (1920-2007) married David L Evans. Betty was born in London, and died in Watford, Hertfordshire.

The Children of Catherine Haughton Rentoul and Robert Foster Dill

The children of Catherine Haughton Rentoul and Robert Foster Dill were: 

i. Susanna West Dill (1841-1931) married John McCrea
ii. Rev. Samuel Marcus Dill (1843-1924) married Agnes Graham Rowe (1855-1934)
iii. Mary Dill (1845-1931) married Richard Dawson Bates.
iv. Francis Nesbit Dill (1848-1901)
v. Hessy Foster Dill (1850-1931) married William Archer Kennedy
vi. James Chiseldon Gooch Dill (1856-1911)
vii. Robert Foster Dill (1858-1869)
viii. Catherine Haughton Dill (1861-1948)
ix. Jane Gordon Dill (1863-1947)

They are all third cousins once removed of Hetty Jane Owen. 

Presbyterian Meeting House in Fisherwick Place, Belfast, where Catherine Haughton Rentoul died. The family no doubt attended the church. Illustration copied from: An Extract of Reflection.

Robert Foster Dill Addresses the Ulster Medical Society

Here follows the opening of Robert Foster’s Dill inauguration speech as President of the Ulster Medical Society in 1872 with accompanying photograph.

This then was the world into which Susanna West's great-grandchildren were to be born and raised – as serious, respectable and respected members of the Belfast Presbyterian community. 




Follow this link to read the full address.

Catherine Haughton Rentoul and Robert Foster Dill

It is entirely probable that Catherine Haughton Rentoul's middle name results from the close relationship that was formed between John Potter and Joseph Haughton many years earlier, and that the relationship between the families had endured through the generations. In any case on the 15th February, 1841, Catherine married Robert Foster Dill of Limarady. Catherine died at 3 Fisherwick Place, Belfast in 1892, aged seventy-one and Robert the following year, aged eighty-two. Robert's obituary below sums up his career:

From: http://brmedj08885-0070a.pdf

The Origins of the Dill Family

In 1902, the Reverend W.T. Latimer published a lengthy article about the Dill family, with a pronounced emphasis on its numerous Presbyterian clergymen, and with a number of references to the Rentoul family with whom they were closely connected. Latimer’s line starts around the time of the Ulster plantation in the early seventeenth century with David Dill who lived in Fannet, near Magheradrummen Lake. David’s wife, Catherine Sheridan was a Roman Catholic who converted to Presbyteriansim, and Latimer has plenty of stories about her spirit and bravery, taking on the soldiers of King James in one incident, and in another pushing her hand down the throat of a wolf attacking the family herd, and holding it there until help arrived to finish off the wolf, the last wolf ever to be seen in that part of Ireland.

Sir Robert McClure, Arctic Explorer.

One of their grandchildren, John Dill married Susan McClure. A descendant of this family was Sir Robert McClure (1807-1873), the Arctic explorer and the first man to transit the North West Passage and circumnavigate the Americas. John Dill died in 1804, and Susan in 1803. They had eight children.

John’s brother, Marcus Dill also married into the McClure family. He and his wife, Mary, had eleven children, of whom two became Presbyterian clergymen, Richard and Samuel Dill, respectively.

In rhapsodic terms, Latimer remarks that:

Almost every member of this family was as highly celebrated for his reasoning powers as were the Rentouls for their eloquence. The Dills were logicians, metaphysicians, and theologians. No doubt some of them, such as Dr. Edward Marcus Dill, were exceedingly eloquent, but it was by their quick perceptions, and acute logical powers, more than by their eloquence that they excelled most of the other ministers in the Synod of Ulster. The very fact that they saw their way so clearly to all their conclusions, caused them to have strong wills; but their strength of will was closely connected with a desire to do what they believed to be right. Hence, it came to pass that when they had formed an opinion that a certain principle was truth, or that a certain course was right, no fear of man, no ties of friendship, would deter them from advocating what they believed to be a Divinely-revealed truth, or from pursuing the course which they were persuaded was the path of rectitude and justice.

Leaving aside this effusive character reference, the Reverend Samuel Dill, the son of Marcus Dill and Mary McClure was born in 1772. He married Hester Foster in 1805, and died in 1845, aged seventy-three. He was the Minister at Donoughmore in County Donegal.

The fifth of their ten children was Robert Foster Dill, who was born in 1811. It was Robert who was to marry Catherine Haughton Rentoul, the daughter of James Rentoul and Rose Casement, and grand-daughter of Susanna West.

Rose Casement and James Rentoul

Susanna West's daughter, Rose Casement (1789-1823) married James Rentoul (1784-1839) in 1812 in Downpatrick. She died after giving birth to a stillborn child. 

Copied from:
http://www.visitstrangfordlough.co.uk/
showing Quoile Quay and the
West Tower House by the Countryside Centre.

James, the son of a Presbyterian minister from Londonderry, was buried in the Downpatrick Church of Ireland graveyard. He was a lieutenant in the Derry militia, one of the local forces set up to police the region after the 1798 rebellion. There is a strong sense in all of this that whatever ideological fractions might have taken place in the family in the late eighteenth century, they were now heading firmly into the Unionist camp.

Rose and James had two children:

i. Robert Rentoul was born in 1822 and married Sarah Beggs of Quoile Quay, where Sarah's father ran the Quoile Quay inn. Robert died just shortly after their marriage in 1844 at Ballydugan Cottage and was buried in the Downpatrick Church of Ireland graveyard. He was an apprentice attorney and ensign in the 'Foot Regiment' in 1841. 

ii. Catherine Haughton Rentoul (1821-1892) married Robert Foster Dill (1811-1893) in 1841. Catherine died in Belfast. 

Through the Rentouls, a prominent family of the time, Susanna West's family had started to reverse the decline in their fortunes. Their revival was to continue through the marriage of the Susanna's grand-daughter to Robert Foster Dill, and it is through the nine children of this marriage that the story continues.

Rose Casement was the first cousin x3 removed of Hetty Jane Owen.

Susanna West and William Casement

Susanna, or Juana West was the eldest daughter of Godfrey West and Elizabeth Hadzor. She married William Casement (no relation of the famous Sir Roger Casement). William was a shoemaker, which gives just some idea of how far the stock of the West family had fallen over the years. And in what appears to be a repeated occurrence amongst the West and Hadzor families in this period, the marriage did not last. At some point, William chose to pack up and emigrate to America, leaving Susanna, and their one daughter, Rose Casement to fend for themselves.

Robert Foster Dill.
Portrait from Queen's University, Belfast. 

By the time she died though in 1851, aged ninety-one, Susanna West had seen her grand-daughter marry an eminent Belfast medical practitioner, by the name of Robert Foster Dill, and give birth to five of her nine children. 

In marrying into the Dill family, a revival of fortune and prestige, is certainly evident, and this in itself suggests that whatever misfortunes Godfrey West may have faced, the name of the family and its pedigree still had enough currency to secure some sound marital alliances.

As this line spreads out, the attachment of the family with the Scottish Presbyterian community becomes more and more evident, with one branch departing Ireland entirely for Ayrshire in Scotland. 

A second branch remained in Ireland, to continue its engagement with the intractable problem of Anglo-Irish relationships. 

And a third branch made its way to England, there to become loyal servants of King, Crown, and Empire. 

These then are the Irish cousins of Hetty Jane Owen, as descended from Susanna West, the elder sister of Maria West, the x2 great-grandmother of Hetty Jane Owen. In all cases, they share direct descent from Godfrey West and Elizabeth Hadzor. 

Susanna died on ‘The Hill’, presumably Cathedral Hill, the site of Downpatrick Cathedral, burial place of St. Patrick. From there it was a short stroll past Downpatrick prison, where Susanna might had she chosen, witnessed the hanging of Thomas Russell, and then down to the town centre, where the town divided into the main arteries of English Street, Scotch Street, and Irish Street, neatly reflecting the demographics of the town, and the divisions of the day. 

The Disappearance of the Potters

John Potter of 'The Hill' died finally on the 15th April, 1802, aged eighty-five, passing on his estates to his daughters, including Rose Nevin and Elizabeth Carson, later to pass at least some of her lands to her first cousin, Maria West.

Blackwood also notes that in his will, John also left legacies to John Johnston Potter, and David Johnston Potter. Blackwood clearly could not uncover exactly how John Johnston or David Johnston were related to John, and opened a new page for this branch. 

Copied from a Liverpool Irish website. The unique Liverpool identity,
and accent derive from Ireland, rather than England.
The slogan in the photo was coined at the time of the
1916 Easter Rebellion.

It is interesting to observe that like Godfrey West, these two Potters also left County Down for good, and made their way to Liverpool, there to make fresh starts in life. For whatever reason, all was not well for them in Downpatrick. 

Blackwood records six children for John Johnston Potter. Two of these children were apparently tinsmiths in Liverpool and Tranmere respectively. Of David Johnston Potter's four children, two became mariners.

It is said that probably three-quarters of Liverpool's population has Irish descent, with two major periods of influx taking place during the period of the great famine of the 1840s, and, earlier, at the time of the 1798 United Irish rebellion. And certainly it was around this time that both these two Potters along with Godfrey West arrived in the city.

There are a number of other Potters listed on the County Down website of Ros Davies, some no doubt relatives of John Potter, but again there are no clear-cut connections.

As we have learned though, the John Potter who married Maria Hadzor was a highly successful entrepreneur, and the man who was responsible for Harriett Wombwell inheriting her portfolio of County Down lands. The majority of his holdings and wealth passed to his daughters after his death. Whatever legacies he passed on to John Johnston and David Johnston Potter seem to have gone little way to securing for them the life of luxury that John and Maria must have enjoyed in Downpatrick.

The Children of Godfrey West and Elizabeth Hadzor

To recap: Godfrey West married Elizabeth Hadzor, the daughter of Dr. Seneca Hadzor on July 3rd 1759 in Downpatrick Church of Ireland, according to Family Search, and on July 3rd 1760, according to Blackwood. 

Note also that the Family Search Site records the birth of a West child in Downpatrick in 1734, to Thomas West and Mary, interesting given the appearance of a Thomas West in the Downpatrick Freemason records along with Godfrey.

In any case, the four children of Godfrey West and Elizabeth Hadzor were:

i. Susanna (or Juana) West. She was baptized on the 4 July, 1761, and died 23rd February 1851, at ‘The Hill’, Downpatrick. She married William Casement.

ii. Catherine West was baptized on the 14th January, 1763 in Downpatrick. The Belfast Commercial Chronicle recorded her death in 1847. There is a reference to her as one of the owners of the Irish lands in the 1881 auction documentation. She does not appear to have ever married.

  Supplied by Chris West

iii. Maria West was baptized on the 13th February, 1765 in Downpatrick, and died in Stoke Newington, London on the 23rd January 1846. She married Richard Wombwell in St. Pancras, London on the 23rd March, 1802.

iv. John West was baptized in Downpatrick on the 16 October, 1767 and died young, according to Blackwood's notes.

Harriett Wombwell, the daughter of Maria West was to name one of her children - Catherine West Robinson - after one of her Irish aunts. 

Since John West died young, that just leaves us with Susanna (Juana) and Maria. 

Susanna lived to the ripe old age of ninety-one, according to Blackwood, and died in Downpatrick in 1851, the last of the Wests of Downpatrick in our Hadzor-West line. 

The Southwell School on Cathedral Hill, Downpatrick, very close to Downpatrick Prison.
 Susanna West lived somewhere close by.

As detailed by Blackwood however, and through the Peerage Website and elsewhere, there is a wealth of information about Susanna's - or Juana's descendants, to whom we will shortly turn our attention, before returning to the youngest of the sisters, Maria West. 

Godfrey West and the Freemasons

From the membership records of the Downpatrick Grand Lodge of Freemasons, Godfrey is no. 15. Note that a Thomas West is no. 7.

The 1765 by-laws for the Downpatrick Lodge demanded a joining fee of just over eight shillings, and presumably subsequent dues thereon. It is recorded that a continuing issue was the difficulty some members had meeting these obligations, and it is a realistic guess that Godfrey West would have been amongst their number.

For all the mystique, secrecy and arcane ritual associated with Masonry, The Masons were committed to charitable work as well as acting as a kind of mutual support system. 

But of course ideas were shared and exchanged through the Lodge, and although loyal to the English Crown, they were also disposed to increased rights for the Catholic population, hence their attraction presumably to the likes of Thomas Russell, with his view that a United Ireland would provide a brighter and better future for all. Such a perspective may also have had a certain resonance to the likes of somewhat down-on-their-fortunes characters such as Godfrey West. It seems highly likely that Godfrey hoped that membership of the Masons would somehow help restore his flagging fortunes. It was not be though, and Godfrey at some point felt it necessary to escape his debts, leave his wife behind him, and make his way to Liverpool never to be heard of again.

We do know however that he was a Churchwarden in the Church of Ireland in 1766.

The Founding of the Grand Lodge of Downpatrick

Downpatrick Lodge 367 from one of the early
Minute Books. Copied from the DownpatrickFreemason Website.

It is perhaps hard to appreciate from a distance the ideological and religious ferment of those bygone days. For those of a theological disposition, the precise relationship of Jesus Christ to God was a matter of passionate debate and disagreement, as exemplified in the trial of the Reverend Thomas Nevin,  So too was the question of who - if anyone - should be the symbolic and mediating link between earth and heaven. It could be the Pope, if one chose to be Catholic, the Monarch if you chose the Anglican route, or nobody much at all if you followed the dissenting tradition for whom the function of their leaders was more a matter of governance than direct intercession. 

Then there was the question of how this intersected with the rise of nation states and national identity, which also seemed to demand conformance to a common set of beliefs and values. For the English rulers of the time, this meant adherence to Anglicanism, and second class citizenship at best for others. 

Add to this the explosive concepts unleashed by the French and American revolutions that laid the base for universal rights and secular organisation, enormous economic and social disparities, and powerful vested interests in the status quo, and there you have a recipe for interesting times. 

Tongues will hence have fluttered wildly in the Downpatrick debating societies, not only in the Whig club, but also in the Downpatrick Grand Lodge of the Freemasons, Lodge Number 367 to be precise, after the issue of its official warrant in 1767. 

Edward Parkinson, who was to write about the West family at the turn of the twentieth century was a member of the Lodge. So too many years earlier was Thomas Russell, the Linen Hall librarian and United Irishman, who was to meet his end on the gallows outside Downpatrick prison in 1803. And so also, a generation earlier, was Godfrey West, the grandfather of Harriett Wombwell.

John ‘Yehya-en-Nasr’ Parkinson

http://www.muslim.org/woking/is-rev-mar14.htm

A few words are in order about John Parkinson, a distant cousin of the family through the West line.

John Parkinson was actually born in1874, in Kilwinning, Ayrshire, Scotland, his family having left County Down for Scotland. John was a particular devotee of astronomy and was a member of the British Astronomical Society. What is curious about him is that in 1901 he left behind his Presbyterian roots and converted to Islam, assuming the name Yehya-en-Nasr. He was a particular admirer of the Orroman Empire and wrote a number of volumes of poetry devoted to his new religion as well as continuing his astronomical research. His long epic poem the Osmanli Nameh was presented to the Sultan Abdul Hamid II himself, who was reportedly an admirer of Parkinson's work. He died in 1918, and since he had already been upset that the First World War had pitted the British against the Ottomans, it was probably for the best that he did not live on to see the final dismemberment of their empire.

For more about John Parkinson, see Yahya Birt's website.