4. Children and siblings

His children

Isabella Dunlop wrote several letters to Latimer. For example in October 1897: “D^r Dickson had three children. His eldest William Galoway Dickson was married to my fathers sister Eliza. Jane died unmarried. Henry went to America & we know nothing of him. In 1842 William took his family to Tennessee where some of his fathers family lived in Greenville Tennessee and there my brother was with them for many years. M^r Dickson died, & all his sons & daughters, but some of their family's are still there”.

In March 1898: “There were two daughters, Jane unmarried, & I think the other was married to a Mr Bleakly who had a son, who also went to America. Some of the descendants are in Greenville Green Co. Tennessee”.

Isabella Dunlop, Alexander Gordon and Alexander Hill have some facts right and some wrong. While of course appealing to readers, as did Latimer, for facts and corrections (Do you know…?), I offer the following summary.

The Narrative says that six children (two daughters and four sons) were alive at the time of Dickson’s imprisonment; and Desmond Bailie’s list is:

Jane Dickson, said by Isabella Dunlop to have died unmarried, is probably the daughter accused by Rev. Robert Allen, when he wrote about Dickson for the PHS, of spending on drink the money that was meant to support him during the last years in Belfast.

David McMinn Dickson was presumably born after Jane, who was baptised just over 6 months earlier. William Steel Dickson writes to his nephew William, on 30 June 1794, from Carnmoney: "David is here with me. He has been two Seasons in Edinburg, & promises to do very well. You'll be surprised to know that he is already taller than I am. He sends Love to you. I write this on my Knee, in great Haste, as I have to ride a long Journey today". This suggests that David was still growing. The "Haste" and "long Journey" are interesting, and Government agents may have been keeping Dickson under watch at any time, but he had a good reason: he needed to get to the Presbyterian Synod meeting at Dungannon three days later, not just to attend but to officiate and hand over his duties to the next chairman (or "Moderator"). Carnmoney to Dungannon is about fifty miles by road today. If he went home to Portaferry first, the distance would be at least a hundred miles.

The Hibernian Magazine says that on Thursday 27 November 1794 "the following young gentlemen were elected annual Presidents of the Hibernian Medical Society in Edinburgh: Messrs Scott, Millet, O'Connor and D. M. Dickson, son of the Rev Dr. Dickson, Portaferry".

The Narrative says David was “serving his majesty, as a surgeon” for “some years” before June 1798. His first such appearance to my knowledge is on Les Deux Amis the day after his father’s transfer to a prison ship in Belfast Lough:

(by kind permission of The National Archives, ref. ADM104/60/3).

This may be the French schooner captured in 1796, converted to a gun-brig, and wrecked off the Isle of Wight on 24 June 1799. Its crew survived.

The Belfast News-letter of 27 June 1800 has:

Gordon gives 1798 and McKinney 1802 for the year of death, with no place. Blackwood Pedigree volume 20 in the Linen Hall Library reproduces “24 June at Donaghadee BNL. 1800”.

Mary Charlotte Dickson married a Mr Bleakly (or Bleakley, etc.), as Isabella Dunlop says: “At Armagh, Wm. Bleakly, Esq., to Mary Charlotte, youngest daughter of the Rev. Wm. Steel Dickson, D.D. Minister of the new Congregation of Protestant Dissenters at Keady” (Saunders's News-letter of 9 December 1809). The Dublin Evening Post of 14 October 1797 advertises William Bleakley’s farm and bleaching-green near Keady for leasing on renewable terms, and this may be the same family.

John Echlin Dickson had a middle name of local importance. William Steel Dickson preached in March 1779 before the “Echlinville Volunteers”, an armed group (founded by Charles Echlin, who had descendants also called Charles) of which he acted as chaplain and captain. The Echlin name may honour that link.

Henry William Dickson is William Henry in McKinney’s notebooks, but McKinney agrees with Blackwood and the Belfast Monthly Magazine about Henry’s death in 1810:

“Eldest son”: David McMinn was dead (not, as far as I know, disowned) by that time - but was John Echlin? I know of no marriage record for Henry, or other evidence that he emigrated and returned. Isabella Dunlop wrote at first “Henry went to America & we know nothing of him” and then “I do not know where he…went”.

William Galaway Dickson is the only other known son. His middle name appears in various spellings (Galway, Galloway, Galoway). It is a common family name, and a Scottish region, and there were Galaways in Portaferry; some opinions voiced by the notable American patriot Joseph Galloway sat very well with Rev. Dickson. William married Eliza Dunlop of Daisy Hill, Isabella Dunlop’s aunt, and they joined his relatives in Greeneville where he died in 1851.

This account will, I think, be considerably improved if the original transatlantic letters and the Tennessee family records and gravestone transcriptions are reexamined.

His siblings; the Carntall farms

McKinney, in the Whig, mentions the “sister’s son…with other relatives”. In his notebook, Dickson’s sister Mary marries John Carruth: hence possibly the link with the Robert Caruth said to have attended Dickson’s funeral, and the Robert Caruth who is buried in William Steel’s grave. Another sister Jane marries Anthony Neill: various Neills are in the Carnmoney books.

McKinney lists four sons of John and Jane: William (Rev.), John, James (Dr.) and Robert. The “Dr.” is born in 1751, and a puzzle. Brother John of Carntall, writing to his son William Dickson of Greeneville, says in 1794 “My brother Hugh Recd. a letter fro you some time Ago", and in 1801 "Your Uncle Hugh is got Married of Late; to a woman of Portaferry and is well". This could be the Hugh Dickson of Richard Clarke’s Ulster Doctors and the Glasgow records, the fifth son of John Dickson: matriculated 1777 (so that a birth year of 1751 would be unexpectedly early); MA (Glas) 1781; MD 1784. The published transcription gives “Cormmeney”, and “Carnmoney” is plausible:

Mrs Dickson, relict of the late Dr Hugh Dickson, died at Portaferry c. 29 November 1804 (Belfast Commercial Chronicle, 2 December 1805).

Richard Clarke finds four qualified Ulster doctors named James Dickson; none is plausibly a brother of William Steel Dickson; one is probably the thrice-married son of James Hill Dickson of Ballynahinch and father of James Hill Dickson, J.P. So we have Hugh the fifth son of a John Dickson of Carnmoney, and we have the Portaferry physician Hugh Dickson, and – perhaps unknown to these early biographers – we have a brother Hugh of John Dickson of Carntall (and hence of William Steel Dickson). Of course McKinney may have believed two things and conflated them: there was a son James, and there was a doctor son.

Robert, born in 1753 and recalled by McKinney in his 1883 letter, is probably the Robert Dickson of Ballycraigy remarked for his old age and clear faculties in the mid-1830s Ordnance Survey memoirs. McKinney was born in 1832.

It is interesting – it may either confuse the issue, or partly explain the Gamble confusion – that Richard Dickson and his wife Agnes Campbell lived in Carnmoney and attended the Presbyterian Church; in the Carnmoney books, one son (John G., born 7 December 1821 in McKinney’s notebook) is distinctly John Gamble Dickson from Whitehouse, baptised 17 January 1822 and son of Agnes Campbell:

There were successive Richard Dicksons, and the 1858 Financial Statement of Carnmoney Presbyterian Church shows one of them sharing pew number 7 in the West Gallery with Robert Caruth and my cousin James Hill – the men buried, in 1885 and 1911 respectively, in the same grave alongside William Steel:

In 1834 Richard “Dixon” and John “McClennaghan” are marriage witnesses for Gilbert McClennaghan and Fanney Campbell, niece of the Agnes Campbell above.

John “Dixon” and Margaret “McClenachan” married in Ballycraigy in 1779, but unless they admitted and regretted “antenuptial fornication” – a frequent topic of the Session meetings – they were unlikely to be in good standing and the parents of William (of Carntall and Greeneville) if his birth date c. 1775 is correct.

Two of the Richard Dicksons appear in the press in 1817, in dispute over the Carntall farm previously held by James Dickson:

Here J Ramsay and T Garrett are at 24 Upper Dominick-street in Dublin in 1817; in Pigot’s Directory for 1821-22 they are also at York-street in Belfast. The Garrett family continued as solicitors and several are buried in Clifton Street cemetery.

The same area, 11 acres 2 roods 12 perches or 11A. 2R. 12P. in Irish Plantation Measure (1 acre IPM = 1.62 acres statute), is stated in a Carntall lease to James Dickson for 21 years from May 1770. The adjacent farm of 10A. 0R. 17P. was to be leased to John Dickson for 41 years or 3 lives, also from May 1770, but that lease was “not executed”; instead a lease, again for 3 lives or 41 years, began in May 1788.

John Dickson of Carntall was dead by 1816 but his wife Margaret was alive in 1824; their son William had an uncle James Stewart; in 1832 the 10A. 0R. 17P. was leased to James Stewart of Straidnahanna.

These are two thin strips of land stretching north-south between the Carntall Road and the southern boundary of the townland. Much of their area today is within the Ballyearl golf course and leisure centre. The Mossley Mill lands, now the Newtownabbey council offices, adjoin that boundary within sight of the Dickson farms, and in 2016 the direct descendants of William Steel Dickson’s brother John were welcomed there by Councillor Thomas Hogg just before his term as Mayor concluded (North Irish Roots, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 37-40, 2016).

Dickson’s 1794 letter from Carnmoney to his nephew William also adds, slightly, to our knowledge of what he did in the agitated run-up to the United Irish rebellion. The letter, addressed to plain “William Dickson” in Bottetourt, Virginia, went via John Service in Philadelphia – probably the shopkeeper in Philadelphia’s East Side in the 1790 census, and the merchant in Market Street in the 1795 town directory. Rev. Bailie (who may not have known of the letter) writes:

We can infer that, at least this once, Dickson visited his relatives near Sentry Hill. His father John Dickson’s farm was “on the east side of Ballycraigy” according to McKinney’s 1883 Whig letter; his brother John lived about three miles away in Carntall, beside (as we saw above) a James Dickson. This James, if named on the lease of 1770, is not likely to be the brother James who – according to McKinney’s notebooks – was a “Dr” born in February 1751; he might be the James who married in 1750 (see above). Could a lease be prepared – then not “executed” – for a nineteen-year-old? More work is needed.

This map snippet shows the townlands around Carnmoney and Ballylinney (at the northwest edge of modern Newtownabbey conurbation), with occupiers of some farms and land plots in the 19^th century. John and Margaret Dickson lived on the hillside in southern Carntall, next to James Dickson’s land, with views south (across what became Mossley Mill and the council offices) towards Carnmoney and Cave Hill. The King’s Moss or King’s Bog was a loosely defined area of small farms and peat deposits. The railway line to Ballyclare runs more or less along the southern boundaries of Kingsmoss, Ballyearl and Carntall. For the precentor Benjamin Dickson and the publican James Dickson see North Irish Roots, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 43-51, 2017.

In 1770 (the year of non-execution) Dickson was about to start his ministry in Ballyhalbert; evidently at least some relatives also moved to the Ards by the mid-1790s. John Dickson of Ballycraigy was weak in 1794 and dead by 1799; it is not clear whether Robert or someone else took charge of the farm in the absence of the eldest son.

It is likely, but not certain, that in 1794 William Steel Dickson and his son David were visiting John Dickson (the father) in Ballycraigy, and also visiting (or being visited by) John Dickson (the brother in Carntall). They may have passed to and from Sentry Hill and Ballycraigy via the narrow road now called Kiln Road (the boundary between Ballycraigy and Ballyhenry townlands). The maps prepared by James Crow c. 1770 for the Donegall estates show a single farm as a narrow north-south strip along the whole eastern edge of Ballycraigy; occupiers in more recent times include the McCarrolls and Straghans.

My family’s farms, as the Griffith books and this snippet show, adjoined this road in the 19^th century, but I do not know just where the Carnmoney Hills farmed in the late 18^th century, or why the historians (primarily Rev. Bailie) say that Dickson’s parents lived at “the Old Kiln, Ballycraigy”, or why the Whig (see above) adds that John Dickson held a public house. In the 19th century the Fergusons and then their Hill relatives held the public house a few hundred yards to the east, in Ballyhenry townland, at what is now Corr’s Corner. There were several lime kilns not far away, but I know of none surviving at Kiln Road itself, though a suitable small stream still flows across the road into "our" farms. Or, on this long strip of farmland at the east of Ballycraigy, there may have been a kiln for drying flax, or drying corn before it was milled in Carnmoney.