Ireland

THE  IRELAND  OF  DR.  DILLON

or

HOW  I  DISCOVERED  ALL  ABOUT  HIS  FAMILY

The Dillons lived in Ireland for hundreds of years.  Most of our Dr. Dillon's family were well-to-do.  They lived in castles like these:

Well preserved -

still inhabited today.

A ruin in a field

By the time Dr. Dillon was born, his family was living near cities, in houses like this one:

Or in fashionable terraced houses

inside the city limits.

And one cannot think of Irish families without asking the questions:

 "Were they 

Catholics or Protestants?"

"What church did they go to?"

or

"Did they dig with the left or the right foot?" 

What a surprise!
This family was a bit of both.  I think each married the one they fell in love with - and they lived mostly in the border areas between the Catholic regions to the West  and the better land appropriated by the English to the East.  The Dillons were outgoing, well-liked by both sides of religious conflict, helped both sides as they saw the need and surely they had a great sense of fun and good humour.

The two towns shown on the map of Ireland above, were where Dr.  Dillon's family were living in the 1800s.  And how do I know this?

Yes, from Records, but only partly.  You see, most of the records were kept by the English, and most of these were stored in the Custom House, in Dublin - beside the River Liffey: 

And some Irish people didn't like these records.

Roddy Doyle wrote it best in his memoir, Rory and Ita, describing how his grandfather, Tim Doyle, was involved in the burning down of the Custom House in May, 1921:

   "He was one of the men detailed to go down to the cellars, armed with pick-axes to stave in the barrels of lovely whiskey and brandy maturing down there.  He was picked because he didn't drink.  They then lit the the wood and paper torches  and threw them into the sea of alcohol; and got up the stairs as quickly as they could.  When they got outside the Custom House, the British troops had arrived and he told me that he ran down the quays faster than any Olympic runner, with bullets hopping around him.  Five men were killed that day, so the raid was considered by many to have been a tactical disaster; but he got a medal for burning down the Custom House and they had, in fact, broken the back of the British establishment in Ireland.  All their records were gone and they couldn't conduct the civil administration of the country."

If the records were burned up in flames long before my time, what records did I use?

Out in the countryside and in every church, records were also kept.  However, these records are not of births and deaths, but of christenings, of marriages and of funerals.

So one gets an idea of time - but difficulties arise when these church records show, for example, 3 siblings being christened together on the same Sunday!

Family trees may be guessed at - but guesses can be very inaccurate!

For example, my grandfather says our Dr. Dillon was eldest in his family.  I scoured Dr. Dillon's sister's diary.  I transcibed the diary by hand.  Then I computerised the words.  I found some gems!                   

Here is a copy of part of a page from 1856-1858:

Aug 23d: Jane's birthday - she enters her twenty third year

 And earlier the same year, under July:

 Saturday 25th: Entered this day my twenty-fourth year - 'O guide me in the way of true wisdom'

From Navy records I discovered Dr. Dillon was born in 1837.

From the diary above, I discovered one sister was born in 1834 and the other in 1835.

Our Dr. Dillon was the third child and first son.

If you travel from Dublin to Tralee, done with coach-and-four in Dr. Dillon's time, you would pass through countryside similar to that found in the video below.  Always beautiful, changing little - and this video also tells you about the wind and a lovely Irish voice speaks at the end.  

Enjoy this treat! [Make sure your volume is up, speakers on!]

In Tralee, Dr. Dillon's grandparents lived.  Grandfather William was a Protestant Landowner, and he fell in love with the most beautiful woman in Tralee.  They were married.  Grandmother Jane was Roman Catholic and her first language was Irish, or Gaelic.  She wrote: "I don't have the English very well."

Grandmother Jane and Grandfather William had 5 children, 2 boys followed by three girls. 

Tradition had it that when parents were from different religions, the boys followed the father's religion and the girls followed the mother's.  But somehow, the two boys and the eldest girl were baptised together in a Protestant church in Tralee.  Family stories tell us the Roman Catholic Priest then caught up with the family, and the last two girls were baptised Catholics.  That girl who somehow slipped into the Protestant baptism that day was our Dr. Dillon's mother, Catherine.

It was Catherine who married well, a Protestant fellow, also named William, and they had the family whose birthdays are described in the diary above.  And that is why our Dr. Dillon's first name is William - he comes by it honestly.  And that is also why Dr. Dillon's book actually begins in Tralee - for where else should it start, but where it all began?

Why did he become a Doctor?  And, why did he join the Navy?  NEXT TIME - 

Thank You for reading this post, and a big welcome to readers:

from Taiwan, from the Dominican Republic and from Brazil.