(this is the work of Joyce Hetrick)

About 1805, YANCY TURNER married MARY DILLON from Guilford County, North Carolina. MARY’s father was ISAAC DILLON and her mother was JEMIMA BRITTAIN. MARY was born October 2, 1788, according to the Doss-Simmons-Turner family Bible, published 1857.

The Dillons

Luke Dillon-1; Daniel-2; Isaac-3; Jemima-4

ISAAC DILLON-3 was born into a Quaker family in Guilford County, North Carolina. His ancestors had probably been English "Borderers" who had left England or Southern Scotland and moved into Ireland to escape religious persecution. Even in Ireland, there was persecution for the Quakers and many of them left Ireland and fled to Pennsylvania, America's Quaker colony, for protection and religious freedom. Not many Quakers entered the colonies any place else early in the settlement period because of persecution in the colonies as well. Another possibility is that they were members of the Scots Irish [lowland Scots and British borderers] who were moved into Ireland to replace the Celtic Irish, and then converted to the Quaker faith, or even converted after they moved to the colonies. In any case, by the time we find them, they are established within a Quaker Community.

The Pennsylvania Quakers spread out into the neighboring colonies of Maryland and New Jersey. Later, when the Virginia government relaxed their policy of forcing Quakers out of the colony, they moved into Virginia and settled. Though there were several thriving colonies of Quakers within Virginia during the first half of the eighteenth century, and the persecution was generally not very harsh, there was some government harassment and social stigma to be endured. About the middle of the century, many Quakers chose to migrate to other, more backwoodsy, areas to escape the persecution, as well as to seek new lands. Later, they would spread throughout all the colonies.

ISAAC’s father was DANIEL DILLON-2, who had moved to Guilford from Virginia. DANIEL was the son of LUKE-1 and SUSAN __?__ DILLON, who had come from Ireland into Pennsylvania and/or Maryland, and migrated to Virginia sometime around 1732.

The information obtained from several published researchers' works said LUKE DILLON-1 was the first DILLON known of that line who came to this country. According to published reports, he was from "Kilkearney" Ireland and married a girl named SUSAN GARRETT [Barrett?] and they came to Nantucket Island sometime before 1713, and then settled New Garden, Guilford County, North Carolina. There seems [to this author] to be several errors in the published information.

First, there is no "Kilkearney" County, Ireland. The name is probably a bastardization of "Killkenny."

Secondly, in the book, Quaker Friends of Ye 0lden Times, the appendix states, on page 184, that the Nantucket Island, Mass. Quakers did not start coming to New Garden until 1771, and that the first of these was a man named Coffin. Mr. Coffin's grandson was quoted relating the time of arrival at New Garden and the place he left. From other sources, though, we know that our DILLONS were in New Garden before there even "was a New Garden." Also, we know that our group did not come down with the Nantucket Quaker group but left the northeast about 40 years before the Nantucket group did, and settled in Frederick County, Virginia.

Frederick County, Virginia, according to Cartmell’s Shenandoah Valley Pioneers and Their Descendants, a History of Frederick County, Virginia, page 509, says that Frederick County was “Situated in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley, shut in by the Allegany ranges on the west which afforded almost a perfect barrier against cyclonic and tornado storms that sweep from the Great Lakes region...” He went on to extole the virtues of the variety of soils and the “early spring grazing on the mountain sides.”

Winchester is the county seat of Frederick County. In March of 1743, George Hodge was one of the Justices of the county who took the bond of the new clerk of the county. Lots were sold for the new town of Winchester. In 1746, the city fathers saw fit to erect a ducking stool on the model of the one at Fredericksburg. It has a pit 7 feet deep and six feet square and lined with rock. The county jail had been erected in 1744.

LUKE and SUSAN [GARRETT?] DILLON had four children listed in the Quaker records, but it is likely that there were other children.

Children of Luke-1 and Susan __?__ Dillon

Hannah Dillon-2, born about 1711
DANIEL DILLON-2, born September 4, 1713
William Dillon-2, born about 1715
Luke Dillon, Jr.-2, born about 1717

The Hinshaw Encyclopedia of Quakers, a compilation of Quaker Records, lists LUKE and SUSAN DILLON’s children and their dates of birth, but not where they were born. Frederick County, Virginia, where DANIEL's children were born, was not settled until about 1720, [some sources say 1732] so LUKE and SUSAN DILLON must have come there sometime after that. This would mean that DANIEL and his siblings were born elsewhere. It is possible that some of the children were born in Ireland before the family emigrated to the colonies. Probably the family was in Maryland before coming to Virginia, but if and when they were in Maryland is not known at this point.

Thirdly, in his book New Garden Friends Meeting, The Christian People Called Quakers, Hiram H. Hity states:

...a1ong the Monocacy River, a tributary of the Potomac, in Maryland. Sometime before 1730, a meeting called "Monoquesy" was formed in this region, near the present village of Buckeystown....In 1732 a migration southward was undertaken by Alexander Ross and a company of Pennsylvania and Maryland Friends, who secured from the Governor and Council of Virginia one hundred thousand acres of land for a colony on Opequan Creek, another tributary of the Potomac. This led to the formation of two meetings Opequan and Providence, which were formed into Hopewell Monthly meeting in 1735.

Later in the same book he states: A number of Quakers about this period, some of whom purchased from Ross, made settlements on Apple Pie Ridge, and elsewhere not far off, among whom were the Bransons, Luptons, DILLONS and others. It is said that those who settled on Ross' lands, and the Quakers generally, were free from all depredations of the Indians, for the fame of Penn as a pacificator and as a man who always treated the aborigines with justice, paying them for their lands, etc. reached far and wide among the savages.

The Friends for many years maintained three Meetings, and for some reason they were all designated as Hopewell Meeting; the first being Hopewell on Applie pie Ridge, one at Pugh's town [Gainesboro] and one on Crooked run [east of Stephens City.] [Cartmell, Shenandoah Valley Pioneers and Their Descendants, pg. 215.]

Cartmell says on page 269, “Alexander Ross and his settlers were slow in securing their grant for the large tracts. The first appears November 22, 1734, for 2,373 acres. This tract lies north of Winchester.” He goes on to say, “this was part...and sub-divided into tracts or homes for the Quaker families drifting from Pennsylvania, Delaware and other points north in 1734.....including the Apple Pie Ridge section. Ross found obstacles in the form of what is generally known as the Joist Hite grant. Hite had obtained his order through John Van Meter in 1730.”

We do know the DILLONS were in Virginia by 1745, because DANIEL's oldest daughter was born there that year. Also, DANIEL's brother, William-2, was in a party to lay out a road.

We have laid off the road from Captain Frosts mill thence to Buffler lick, thence to the Backside of John Bossers' field, thence to David Shrinaers, thence to the usual ford, thence on east side of Wm. Frosts; Plantation thence along a good Ridge by a course of marked trees to Matthias Elmores, thence along Elmores creek to the head the best conveniensts[sic] way that can be had by widow Dillon’s, .... [Ibid.]

It is possible that the reference to "the widow Dillon" referred to LUKE's widow. It is probable that "everyone knew" to whom the reference was, and that she had lived there for some time by 1744 when the reference was made. William would have been about 30 years old in 1744, and at that time the other children of LUKE were marrying and establishing homes of their own.

The Hinshaw Encyclopedia of Quakers, a compilation of Quaker statistical records, and county deed, will, land and court records, were carefully searched, using the counties stated in the other research and surrounding counties. The minutes of the first 24 years of Hopewell Monthly Meeting were burned, so the records are incomplete, but the DILLONS probably settled in Virginia about 1732 with Ross on Apple Pie Ridge. [Hinshaw, pg 357-360.]

There is some contention about who was the first white settler in the area, and apparently there were two or three that contended for the honor. Unfortunately, it caused quite a bit of problem for settlers who got grants from these earlier settlers. A German man named Joist Hite [many different spellings] was one. There were overlapping claims to grants and many law suits were filed. Lord Fairfax tried to dispossess several settlers that had been there many years. A man named Isaac Van Meter probably proceeded Hite and seems to have the earlier grant, dated in 1730. Alexander Ross took up an even later grant of land.

Frederick County, Virginia, was formed by an Act of the House of Burgesses in 1738, which directed that Frederick and Augusta counties be taken from Orange County, which itself had been formed from Spottsylvania in 1734. That division contained lands that today are not still included in Frederick. Settlement had proceeded the division of the counties. Records for Augusta County, though it was formed in 1734, were not kept separately until the mid-1740’s. The first will in Augusta County was not recorded until 1746. Records for Augusta were apparently kept in the precursor county.

The "Irish Quakers" were usually not native Celtic Irish, but were usually transplanted Scots or Englishmen who had moved into Ireland to escape religious persecution. The Church of England/Ireland [the official religion] persecuted all dissenters, and especially the Quakers, who would take no part in war and make no oaths, which made them doubly suspect by the authorities. George Fox had "started" the Quakers, or Society of Friends as they called themselves, though he had no intention, at the time, of "starting" a "new" religion, but intended, instead, to go "back to the basics" of Christianity and do away with the pomp and circumstance of the then organized religious bodies

A sizable number of American Quakers came from the English settlements in Ireland. They left Ireland due to religious and economic persecution from the British government, and began to arrive in the colonies in large numbers in 1682. Pennsylvania was the "Quaker" Colony founded by William Penn. They dispersed into Maryland and surrounding colonies. They were slower to move into Virginia, whose leaders were firmly Church of England and anti Quaker, until into the second decade of the eighteenth century.