Your American Secretary, Millicent Craig, has invited me to write a contribution for the Dalton website. This is something which I am very pleased to do. Let me start by sending my greetings to all Daltons, and those of Dalton descent, around the world who share our interest in Dalton family history.

 

The Dalton Genealogical Society was founded back in 1970. I was then a young university graduate embarking on a career in the marketing and sales side of the computer industry. Little did I think then that the DGS would be accessible world-wide through the, at the time undreamed of, World Wide Web. Had it been suggested in 1970 that all this information that we have about the Dalton family history could be made accessible, to anyone who wished to find it, through a computer sitting on their desk at home, and this was both a technically and, perhaps more importantly, an economically viable proposition, our sanity would have been questioned. The truth is of course that all this and much more is a reality. Who is bold enough to predict where all this might lead us in another thirty years from now?

 

It might be of interest to give you a little background to how and why the Society came into existence. As a young lad I had always been interested in my ancestors and I used to pester my uncles and aunts and my grandparents for information about their grandparents and great grandparents. Slowly I assembled a picture of my family but, on the Dalton side, only as far back as my great great grandfather who was born in 1816. Then in 1967 I struck gold. I discovered that a second cousin of my grandfather, a Mrs. Edith Leaning (nee Dalton), had written an 800 page typescript volume about the Daltons taking the family tree back to the 13th Century. She had died in 1959 at the age of 88 but I was fortunate in contacting her daughter who gave me the working copy of her researches. Suddenly I had another 600 years of family history at my fingertips. Mrs. Leaning's copy of her "Dalton Book" was one of only four or five in existence and it contained many additional notes, letters and cuttings collected between 1951, when she stopped writing, and her death. With these I was able to start contacting distant cousins around the world and so keep the family history up to date. This was the inspiration for setting up the Dalton Genealogical Society - I needed a medium through which to share all this information and producing an annual Journal seemed the obvious way to do it. So the DGS was born in 1970.

 

Since then we have grown into the organization that we are today. We try to maintain information about all branches of the Dalton family that are brought to our attention and, over the years, we have been very successful in bringing together people with common Dalton ancestry. Through the medium of the DGS Journal we have now published a substantial part of Dalton family history, much of it in the form of carefully researched articles and papers which try to paint the historical and social background to our Dalton forbears. Of course, over the centuries, there have been many Dalton emigrants, particularly to America and Australia. We are delighted that there is so much interest in Dalton family history amongst those descended from those emigrants and we will certainly do all we can to assist in tracing your Dalton forbears. If at times you do not appear to be getting the information you require, I must ask you to be patient. Much of the detailed family history data is very elusive and can take a long time to find. You must also remember that the Society has no paid researchers - it is dependent on the voluntary efforts of its committee and members for all its work. So patience is a virtue for all who are interested in their family history. In time I am sure your patience will be rewarded.

 

There is one final point I would like to make and that concerns standards and accuracy. Over the years the DGS has prided itself in the standard of its research work and the quality of the material it has published. It is very important that these standards are maintained in order that the information that we pass on to succeeding generations is accurate and well presented. We must ensure that we record facts and do not pass on myths. It is very tempting, particularly with such powerful facilities now available for information distribution, to promulgate ill researched or inaccurate information. I therefore sound a note of caution - we must remember that the technology is our servant and not our master. Genealogy and family history can and indeed already are benefiting greatly from information technology, the information superhighway, and the world wide web. I know that the Dalton Genealogy Society will ensure that we all obtain the very best from these opportunities both now and in the future.

 

I look forward to meeting many of you in the coming months and years, maybe at a Dalton Gathering, or through the web. Good luck in your researches!!

 

Michael Neale Dalton

Chairman of the Dalton Genealogical Society

2 Harewood Close, Reigate, Surrey RH2 0HE, England

Tel: 01737 221376

E-mail: michaelndalton@aol.com

From a talk by Dr. Lucy J. Slater

 

In his will, Michael senior calls himself "the unprofitable servant of God". He had two wives and and fourteen children and finished up owning half of Cambridgeshire, so it is difficult to see what he was complaining about. But all of his sons died before him and he left the bulk of his estate to his grandson Michael, son of Oliver. He left to his grandson, John Allington, his great gold chain weighing 15 ounces and said in his will that he had already settled large shares of his property on his three sons, Oliver, Thomas and John at the times that they married. In his last year he wrote a religious book, "The Decay of True Religion and the Rise of the Papacy" which was for the use of his grandson, Michael.

 

Michael said in his will that he was to be buried near the altar of West Wratting parish church, but his tomb must have fallen victim to Dowsing, who according to Cole, "removed superstitious monuments" from that church about two years after Michael had died. His first wife, Frances, has a small plaque commemorating her, but neither he nor his second wife, Mary, have any memorial.

 

Michael junior broke with family tradition and went to New Inn Hall, Oxford in 1635. Perhaps this was to be near his mother at Henly in Arden, or perhaps because his grandfather wanted him to be educated away from Cambridge and give him a chance to find his own way in the world. He went to Lincoln's Inn in 1638 and then returned to Cambridge and married into one of the leading families of Fulbourn when he took as his wife, Susanna Tyrell, who brought with her a dowery of the manor of Zouches in Fulbourn, with its manor house. They were married at St. Edward's church, Cambridge in 1639.

 

In 1984, I was invited by Mrs. Townley, who owns the present manorial rights of Fulbourn, to visit her home, Fulbourn Manor where Michael junior had lived. She is a remarkable old lady. At that time she was about 85 years old. She greeted me kindly and showed me several portraits which hang in the house. The most interesting of these were of Sir Gyles Allington and Michael Dalton senior. She allowed me to take a picture of that painting which was carried out in 1628 when Michael was 63 years of age (see July issue for portrait of Michael). It is the stern face of a strong man and one I should not like to cross. She also showed me several articles of of oak furniture which had come from West Wratting at the time of Michael's death and the set of the six large silver apostle soup spoons mentioned in Thomas' will.

 

She pointed out another old house of Elizabethan date which was at the end of her garden. She said that they had been owned by the Daltons at one time and also that the house across the road from the church had been owned at one time by the Dalton family. So there were three manor houses in Fulbourn, of which three had been owned by the Daltons.

 

Now we return to Michael, junior. Susanna bore him four sons, Tyrell 1640, John 1641, Thomas 1645 and Samuel 1653; and four daughters, Elizabeth 1643, Lettice 1653, Dorothy 1647 and Mary 1650.

 

Tyrell married Elizabeth Goring at Long Stanton in 1661 and she bore him five sons. They were Thomas who died as a baby 1662, Tyrell 1669, Percy 1671, John 1672 and William 1774, and one daughter, Elizabeth 1666..

 

Tyrell was a Justice of the Peace in Fulbourn for several years and died in 1682 when he was still quite young. He has a magnificent tomb in the south transcept of the church. His wife has a simple slab set in the floor beneath. The inscription on Tyrell's tomb is very interesting. He had assumed that this branch of the Daltons had probably come down from Yorkshire before the start of the parish records. This tomb confirms this. It says in Latin, "At the foot of this marble lies Tyrell Dalton, esquire, sprung from the ancient family of Dalton in Yorkshire". So our hypothesis was correct. Tyrell junior went to Caius College in 1684 and married Dorothy Hatton of Swavesey in 1687. She bore him one son, Michael in 1697 and one daughter Elianor in 1700. He was Lord of the manor of Shelford and died in 1730. The parish record says that he was the last of his ancient family.

A copy of the Will of Walter Dalton, Canton, St. Lawrence County, New York, seems to indicate that there was more than one large Dalton Family of likely Irish descent living near the St. Lawrence River in the early 1800's. Ten miles north of Canton in Madrid, lived the ancestors of DGS member, Daveda Bundy of Ohio. Her Dalton ancestors came from Ardbraccan, Meath, Ireland.

 

Another Will of a Thomas Dalton (barely readable) was probated in Madrid in 1857 and reveals that this Thomas Dalton is not in the direct line of Daveda's ancestors either. It now seems that there was a cluster of Dalton families living within a few miles of each other, perhaps related but as of this time a true connection has not been made to link them together.

We know that the Daltons had large families, were farmers and landowners. And the Will of Walter Dalton bears this out. It was drawn on January 8th, 1896 in the presence of H. B. Safford and W. H. Corcoran and signed with his mark, an x. In the Will he states:

 

"First: After all my debts and funeral expenses are paid, I hereby give, devise and bequeath to my son, John Dalton, all the real and personal property of which I may die seized or possessed of, of every name, nature and description it being my clear intention to devise and bequeath all the property I may have or own at the time of my death to my said son, John Dalton.

 

Second: I hereby nominate and appoint my nephew, Thomas Dalton of Canton, NY to be sole executor of this my last Will and Testament."

 

On the 21st day of October 1901, John Dalton presented the last Will and Testament of his father, Walter Dalton, to the Surrogate Court, St. Lawrence, County, NY. As requested by the court, he named the heirs and next of kin of his father. They are: Mary Dalton, widow, John Dalton, Catherine Dalton, Walter Dalton, Mary Dalton, and Francis B. Dalton all of Canton; Maurice Dalton of Syracuse, NY; Thomas Dalton of Lakeside, South Dakota; and Ellen Malloy and James Dalton of Gouverneur, NY. We have no indication of whether all were his children or whether some may have been nieces or nephews.

 

The above should be of interest to readers who have sent queries concerning the names, Maurice Dalton and Francis B. Dalton. There has also been an inquiry about South Dakota Daltons. Gouverneur, NY is about 20 miles south of Canton whereas Syracuse is quite a distance away.

 

The Will was proved on the 16th day of December 1901 and signed by the Surrogate Judge whose name is undecipherable. Since Walter Dalton died before October 1901, some grandchildren and certainly great grandchildren are living. By searching backward from the 1900 Federal Censuses of Canton, NY one will be able to reconstruct this family. Through Walter's nephew, Thomas Dalton of Canton, a second family may be constructed. We hope that this Will proves helpful in beginning to sort the Daltons from upper New York State and in the vicinity of the St. Lawrence River. Excerpts from a second Will will be presented later.

In the June 1998 issue of "Daltons in History", Vol. 1, No. 6, we printed an article, An Irish Conundrum, And More Miners. This item contained the descendency chart of Linda Han which began with the emigration of her ancestor, Felix Dalton from Ireland. We are still seeking the location of his birth, said to be Carriganshire in County Antrim.

 

What we did not mention was that she believes she is connected to the Dalton Gang but the subject was taboo among her elders and she never learned anything more from them. She did learn from an aged aunt that there was a Cardinal Dalton in her background. We have acquired one piece of information that mentions County Armagh (unverified) as the likely abode of the Cardinal.

 

Meanwhile, correspondence from Ann D'Alton in Australia contains some similar information. Ann states that her Daltons emigrated from Northern Ireland to Australia and that there is a Cardinal Dalton in her family. She also states that her grandfather, a politician and traveler, visited with him. He also met Emmett Dalton of the Dalton Gang family in Los Angeles. DGS member, Nancy Samuelson, an authority on this outlaw family, confirms that Emmett was living in Los Angeles after 1913 and died there. He had become involved in movies, authored two books and dabbled in real estate.

 

The Archdioceses for both the Church of Ireland (Anglican/Episcopal) and for the Catholic Church are located in Armagh city, County Armagh in Northern Ireland. We do not find that the Church of Ireland uses the rank of Cardinal in its hierarchy. We do find that within the Catholic Church in Ireland , the rank of Archbishop does use the title Cardinal. The Archbishop of County Armagh holds the highest title in Ireland, The Primate of All-Ireland.

 

Using a time frame for the travels of Ann's grandfather, we are assuming that John Cardinal Dalton was Primate in the first quarter of the 20th Century, if indeed he was located in County Armagh. Certainly our Irish Dalton brethren and others of Irish descent must have some biographical information on this important Irish personage. We are still looking for the exact location of Carriganshire (not on current maps) and your help may lead to the solution of more than one mystery. Who is Cardinal Dalton and where was he located?

Millicenty@aol.com

Dalton Data From Newfoundland

To DGS member Dianne Jackman of St. Johns, Newfoundland we are grateful for the following Dalton data and hope it proves helpful. These items were taken from "The Royal Gazette", a Newfoundland newspaper. Please note that the 1860 marriage took place in Brooklyn.

 

Deserted from the service of Bully, Job & Co., May 13, 1814, Edmund Dalton arrived from Waterford in the Brig "Rose."

Declared Insolvent: Publicans, William Dalton and James Morrissey of St. Johns, 30 Dec 1816 ( 18 Feb).

1830

Persons under mentioned and memorialized for grants of ground described opposite their names (2 Nov).

Patrick Dalton, 28 Sep 1829, Coote's Marsh Road, Adjoining Clancy.

1848 (Marriages-25 Jan)

 

Tillman/Dalton, by Rev. Forrestal. Henry Charles Tillman, Professor of Music, of Halifax, NS, to Mary, 3rd dau. of William Dalton.

Tobin/Dalton, by Rev. Forrestal. William Tobin to Eliza, eldest dau. of William Dalton of this place.

1849 (Marriages)

Lash/Dalton: Thursday by Bridge. Frederick Lash to Bridget Ann, 2nd dau. of William Dalton of this town. (23 Jan).

 

1860 Wyatt/Dalton: At Brooklyn. April 14th by Rev. Franciola, Francis J. B. Wyatt, Esq. to Catherine Dalton. Both of St Johns (8May).

 

Irish Birth Data

Diane also sent this list of Irish birth data taken from microfiche of Irish births. 

Dalton, Catherine, christened 14 Sept. 1833. Parents: Thomas Dalton and Catherine Kenney. Kerry, Castleisland, Ireland. Roman Catholic Catherine, born 1 June 1866, Waterford, Waterford, Browns Lane. Thomas Dalton and Catherine Driscoll.

 

Dalton, Edward born 17 Apr 1867. Waterford, Waterford, Williams St. Thomas Dalton and Catherine Reddy.

Dalton, Elizabeth. Thomas Dalton and Catherine King. Christened 26 Dec 1876, Waterford, John Hill

Dalton/Thornburg

DGS member, Cynthia Snider, of Beltsville, MD is completing her study of the Thornburg/Elledge Family. There is a chapter in the book devoted to the Dalton/Thornburg connection to Thurnham Hall, ancestral home of the Daltons in Lancashire County, England. The marriage of Ann Dalton of Thurnham and Rowland Thornburg brought this Lancashire Dalton blood line to America. There will be a discussion of the historical aspects of this union in a forthcoming DGS Journal. Meanwhile, if interested, you may visit Cynthia's web site: http://www.tomco.net/~csnider or send an E-mail to: csnider@tomco.net

 

Samuel Dalton of VA

An anthology of Samuel Dalton, Mayo County, VA (c. 1699-1810) has been completed by DGS member, Joyce Browning. Joyce has spent a considerable number of years researching her Dalton line and may be contacted for further information. Her E-mail address is: JBrown7169@aol.com

 

Dalton Annual Gathering and Meeting

Daltons who attended the Annual Gathering and Meeting on July 4, 1998 in England had an interesting and enjoyable reunion. After breakfast, the Chairman, Michael Dalton, conducted a meeting attended by all. In addition to the usual business agenda, several items were discussed that were of interest to Americans and the membership at large. A few are discussed below.

 

The date of the next AGM was confirmed for the second week-end in August 1999, and will be held in or near Swaffham in Norfolk. This is the site of Dalton memorials that were recently discovered by DGS member Linda Blake-Bunting. Lucy Slater has lately viewed them. Since this is fairly close to London, we hope that more Americans will attend next year.

 

The Chairman also discussed the feasibility of making the Dalton Book, (researched by Mrs. Edith Leaning and discussed in this issue under Message From The Chairman) available to members. It would commemorate the 30th anniversary of the DGS as well as the millennium. Only about 20 copies of her manuscript are known to have been printed. If the idea of having your own copy of the history of early Daltons appeals to you, please let me know so that we may have an idea of the level of interest. Millicenty@aol.com

 

The Society appointed a new member to its committee, Dr. Antony Cox. His biography can be read in the November 1997 issue of the Journal. The Chairman acknowledged the success of the DGS web site, new memberships and the general layout of the site. He stressed the need for accuracy in reporting.

 

After a gourmet lunch, the group traveled a few miles to the ancient village of Croston for the annual Coffee Day Procession. It began with an invocation at St. Michael's, the village church, and the procession wound its way through the village, reaching its borders as has been the custom on walking day. Since this is the village of my ancestors, the scene was alive with greetings from numerous relatives. (For a look at them, click on Dalton Tea Party).

 

After tea, the Dalton members were again treated to the specialties of the chef at dinner. In the evening, Howard Dalton, the treasurer, displayed the new gift items bearing the Dalton coat of arms. Your American Secretary brought a limited supply back from England and they will be offered on "Daltons in History" in October 1998. They include; a boxed letter opener, a small folding silver plated, double picture frame for your Dalton photos, and a handsome, hammered copper salver (boxed), all quality items.

 

On Sunday morning, some Daltons went to church services in Rufford while others chose to examine the offerings at the local antique fairs. At noon many assembled at the home of Madge and Derek Dalton where a delectable buffet lunch was served and a lively discussion of future plans for the Society took place. Undoubtedly this was a productive and enjoyable week-end and photographs of the gathering will be displayed on the DGS web site in September. Derek and Madge Dalton are to be commended for selecting a first rate hotel for the affair and for managing the entire program with ease.

Each year in Croston, England our Dalton cousins assemble for a tea party and to discuss times past. Many come from the surrounding villages. It was quite a surprise the first time we came together to find that our Dalton cousins looked nothing like my mental picture of them. As a young girl growing up in Massachusetts, my image of an English woman was that of Miss Emily Sears who was tall, thin, and dressed in tweeds while strolling the streets of Boston's Back Bay. She was never without her umbrella, her walking stick. As you can see from the accompanying photo, our Dalton cousins not only look alike but dress alike. With few exceptions the ladies are less than five ft. and five in. tall, have fair complexions, fine features , and wavy hair that turns snowy white at an early age. Several of the Dalton men also have the same snow white hair. These Daltons are also noted for their longevity.

Our ancestors have been landowners in the village for 500 years and prior to that lived in the nearby Village of Bispam for nearly 300 years. We all share the same great, great grandparents, William and Ann Glover Dalton. In this common gene pool your American secretary now blends in with her cousins.