7. Further incidents and questions

Our knowledge about William Steel Dickson’s children and siblings, partly based on Dickson’s 1812 Narrative and the statements or suggestions of Alexander Gordon and other biographers, is not very satisfactory. Dickson’s recall of his own family dates was imprecise, as Classon Porter remarked. Even the basic family tree has doubtful branches, and there are many potential in-laws and cousins (such as the Caruths, Deboys, Martins, McCurleys and Stewarts around Carnmoney) who need attention. Below are a few more questions and leads.

This is Dickson's description in the Narrative of his family circumstances at the start of his confinement (1798):

Of David’s death:

I know of no proven identities for Isabella Dickson's brother, father and sister.

Here Dickson does not name his son “about fifteen years of age” in June 1798, but is clear that he is the “second son” and that David McMinn is alive. This is fifteen and a half years after the baptism of Henry William, the third son in order of baptism, and almost eighteen years after the baptism of John – so the ages and dates, if printed as Dickson wrote them, are hard to explain. David had been “two Seasons” in Edinburgh in June 1794, was elected as a President in November 1794, and had been “serving his majesty, as a surgeon” for “some years” before June 1798; these statements are compatible, just.

While in Fort George, on 22 August 1801, Dickson wrote to the Home Secretary Thomas Pelham asking that “my youngest son – a boy in his 15th year – may be permitted to come hither, and reside with me”; this fits the baptism of William Galaway Dickson on 12 October 1785. As far as we know, Pelham did not grant permission.

Dickson says in Retractations "My son was a boarder at Mr Shaw's school, during my absence" and he later repaid Shaw 27 guineas for the fees. Given the baptism dates of the sons we would identify this boarder as William, Henry and John in sharply decreasing order of probability.

Residences and ministries of William Steel Dickson and family: Carnmoney (1744-c.1770), Ballyhalbert (Glastry) Presbyterian (1771-1780), Portaferry (1780-1799); Saintfield where he attended the fair, and Ballynahinch where he took the waters, in summer 1798; Donaghadee (the usual embarkation place for Scotland) where his family relocated during his incarceration; Keady Second Presbyterian (1803-1815); Roan (the family home near the road between Keady and Armagh); Belfast (a small house near Frederick Street / Carrick Hill).

  A later action for debt recovery concerns Dickson’s interest in Ringneill (Ringneal etc.) on the western shore of Strangford Lough. Here the legal term is the Latin Fieri facias and the effect is seizure and forced sale:

This is from the Belfast Commercial Chronicle of 9 December 1812, but several similar announcements appeared later, and the sale enforced by Thomas Walker seems to have been postponed until 1814.

Dickson was not rich, and had lost most of his sources of income. The story would have been different with a large prompt profit from the Narrative. Publication was long delayed and stressful, and left a bad taste; in Retractations (printed in 1813 by Joseph Smyth) Dickson calls the Narrative “most abominably printed”. Bernard Coile, an interesting and irascible Catholic merchant, abused for his support of United Irish principles, played an important part.

I do not know when William Galaway married Eliza (Blackwood vol. 20 gives only the full Keady period 1803-1815), the dates for their children, or – a point of some sentimental importance – whether they arrived in Greeneville in time to see their postmaster cousin William Dickson, who according to one obituary had a sudden apoplectic attack on 31 December 1842 and died on 2 January 1843.  American neighbours and colleagues, up to and including President Johnson, heard that William Galaway had been badly treated by the British authorities because he was the Rev. Dickson’s son; Coile was a close associate and also a target. 

Letters and other records give intermittent news about progress in America. In 1803 John and Margaret Dickson wrote to William “It is reported with us that your Old friend John McCreary of Bottetot is Dead”; there were several McCreery / McCreary families in Botetourt / Bottetourt County. By 1815 William was about 40, well established as a postmaster and businessman in Greeneville; he made business trips to Philadelphia, and his daughter Catharine (sic) was schooled there.

Apprentices and Belfast High Street

This cousin William’s brother John Dickson (that is, another nephew of William Steel Dickson, not a son) was an apprentice in Belfast who served his time till November 1796, and was then in partnership with James A McCrea, and then in business on his own account. William’s parents write from Carntall in April 1796 and March 1801 (Gulf States Historical Magazine, Vol. 2, l903): 

John may have married Miss (Sarah?) Herdman of “Rockborough” (Walker’s Hibernian Magazine, 1804); at any rate he farmed at “Rocksborough” and wrote from there to William in 1816, before emigrating c. 1818 to join William in Greeneville. Ambrose Leet’s 1814 directory has a John Dickson at “Roxborough” in Glenavy; there is still a Rocksborough out along the Crumlin road near Nutts Corner. F J Bigger’s statement that a nephew of Dickson was an apprentice with David Bigger, who had premises at 5 High Street, tallies. Dickson & McCrea advertise their business in the Belfast News-Letter of 15 February 1799; they are succeeding the late Robert Wallace, in premises at 90 High Street “nearly opposite the Market-House”; in 1800 they advertise for an apprentice. In May 1806 John Dickson advertises from 84 High Street, and in October 1806 David Biggar (sic) and others offer for sale “THAT ELEGANT SHOP and STORES, in High-street, lately occupied by JOHN DICKSON”. This sale is consistent with a move in 1806 or 1807 by the nephew John Dickson to land at Rocksborough leased from the Marquis of Hertford; when he writes in June 1816 he has spent “nine years of the prime of life in improving it”.

So, if we believe the Narrative and Bigger and the Carntall-Greeneville letters, John Echlin Dickson is “placed in an eminent mercantile house, as an apprentice”; and his cousin John Dickson, born c. 1776-1780, is an apprentice in Belfast till November 1796; and a cousin is an apprentice with the merchant Bigger. How many men called John Dickson are these? Perhaps there were several in the High Street, or more misprints in the Narrative; or Bigger misremembered, or indeed John Echlin died before 1810 leaving no trace in the records – and leaving Henry William as the “eldest son”.

Hospitality in Scotland

Dickson narrowly escaped James Boswell in Scottish student days, and refers several times in writing to the other “Dr”. Boswell and Johnson were guests at Fort George in 1773, and A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland appeared in 1775. At Bishopton-inn, in 1799, the breakfast table was laid for the prisoners “in a style, on which even the eye of a Doctor Johnson might have dwelt with pleasure”. Dinner, Porter, Ale, Wine, tea, Spirits, water and “twenty good beds” awaited at Hamilton. Then “To the gentlemen of Perth, in particular, I am indebted for personal attentions, the recollection of which I shall ever cherish with gratitude and pleasure”; and an Aberdonian dinner boasted “twenty-seven” elegant and varied dishes (Narrative).

It has been noted many times that these internees, whether through lack of evidence, fear of cross-examination by skilled lawyers in open court, or political policy high and low, were not executed sharpish or left to rot in vile prison ships; instead they were killed by “relative kindness” at the remote but physically comfortable Fort. Nobody, I think, says that Dickson (arrested rather too conveniently from one point of view, and too mercifully from another, just before he either would or would not have led the Rebels under arms) was an agent or turncoat; there is much to suggest instead that he helped his colleagues, keeping their confessional and other private conversations private; and when he wanted to, more often than was strictly necessary or wise, he stood on his dignity. But Robert Black later mocked him and his friends for this comfort and fine dining.

1824 burial

The standard story is that Dickson was buried

• in the presence of a handful of mourners

• in a pauper's grave

• which was then neglected

• until F J Bigger marked the spot.

Though the trail is cold, and I am unsure of many details, I doubt all four points. There is a separate summary Probably some reporter (written for NIFHS and PHS records) on this site.  

Conclusions and questions

This leaves us asking (and I ask readers):

         (a) Who were the “apothecary” son and the “struggling physician” grandson mentioned by Alexander Gordon?

One possible line of descent, a firm tradition in Derek Lundy’s family, is through William Dickson (c. 1809-1866) of Willow Street in Belfast; but he is one of many people apparently buried in Carnmoney’s crammed and neglected cemeteries whose graves cannot be confidently located today. It is a faint possibility that some Carnmoney Hills descend from Dickson’s children: from Jane, unmarried but not necessarily childless; perhaps from David, the tall young student who visits Carnmoney in the mid-1790s and then goes to sea.

         (b) Who was the nephew (not named by F J Bigger) who served time with David Bigger? Was he William’s Carntall brother, was he the grocer John Dickson of High Street in Belfast, was he the John Dickson of Belfast who married Miss Herdman, and was he the John Dickson who wrote from Rocksborough?

         (c) What happened to the daughter Jane? Robert Allen (so far as I know) did not publish in detail the allegations that he gathered about Jane’s drinking and her misappropriation of funds.

In asking Do you know anything of Dr. Dickson's children or what became of them? Latimer was perhaps starting from not much more than McKinney’s gleanings from local residents and the Carnmoney church books. The children’s names were available (from baptismal records, not from Dickson’s publications), and something of their progress could be traced in newspaper announcements, but Latimer – and Classon Porter, Alexander Gordon, Thomas Witherow, and F J Bigger, who all took a strong interest in Dickson and the polemics of religion and politics that surrounded him – do not seem to have paid much attention to the Carntall-Tennessee transatlantic correspondence or the Dicksons’ financial and business history. Of course, they may have known more than they published. 

         (d) What was the claimed line of descent from Dickson to Thomas Alexander Dickson (if he was not teasing Alice Milligan of the Shan Van Vocht, who informed Whig readers of this claim on 6 July 1909?) Is any supported by modern accounts of Thomas’s parents James Dickson and Sarah Anderson? 

         (e) What was the family link between the Richard Dicksons and the others in Carntall? Some close link appears likely from the evidence of an 1817 squabble about the farm leased to John Dickson and next to the farm leased to James Dickson. John was dead by 1816 and a rearrangement of the family assets may have been in progress. What Carntall and Dickson information is in the files, if any survive, of the Belfast solicitors such as Ramsay and Garrett?

         (f) What links were kept with the Kidds of Keady? And with the gentlemen of Perth, or (Brechin Advertiser 24 July 1888) other halts on the route to and from the Fort?

         (g) What is the history of the Ringneill leases?

         (h) On what further evidence did Bigger fix the spot for his Dickson memorial stone? He may be out by many yards. He may have diverted attention from the true spot.

Echoing McKinney, I would be very much gratified to receive information and answers at chrishill197@googlemail.com; I gladly offer Porter, Ale, Wine, tea and even Spirits in return.