Looking for Dillons
Hello,
I've been researching my Dillons (my male line) for several years, my Dillons came over from Ireland to move to Manchester in around the 1820s/30s and my most distant Dillon ancestor I have been able to find is a Patrick Dillon born in around the late 1700s who had two sons that I am aware of, Luke and Patrick who later both moved to Manchester.
I have spent a long time with my Dillons only stating "Ireland" as a place of birth. Recently though I found a family of Dillons in Manchester who I believe are related to "my lot",I'm about 80% sure but not certain and so I've not added them to my tree yet. This family stated their place of birth to be Mayo.
I cannot find the evidence to make this link absolutely concrete and I think that the only way I could do this would be through DNA testing. I have Y-DNA tested my self to 111 markers and have no matches at all with the exception of a few false positive 12 marker matches. It would be great to get in touch with some Mayo Dillons to see if there are any similarities with our paper research and to possibly get them to DNA test to see if we match.
Another piece of circumstancial evidence for my Dillons coming from Mayo is that the name "Luke Dillon" is very common in my tree but seems to be pretty unsual anywhere else, I made a little name distribution map for "Luke Dillons" from Irish birth indexesusing John Grenham's website and it seemed to show quite a strong bias towards the Mayo and Galway area. This is of course hardly strong evidence but it does add a little weight to the family of Mayo Dillons that I believe I a related to.
One thing that I should have mentioned is that I have of course looked through Irish RC registers online but with no luck, I presume that they do not start early enough since Patrick was born in the late 1700s and his sons Luke and Patrick were born in the 1810s and 20s.