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.