Jack,
Regarding the Silver Bowl Blog i'm afraid as the original early story is incorrect it will keep being repeated. But the later details from direct family can be useful.
The same with the 'Peerage', half the family is missing off that.
Reason being is the family line known as 'John Dill's' is generally omitted as all the family histories come from the David Dill line.
But as these have possibly been mixed up at the time of the Hearth Tax Rolls there is a problem with anything pre 1700 being accurate, in my opinion.
The Peerage was taken from a set of family notes that are currently held in the Public Records Office Belfast, written by Nancy Kingham.
There were family 'interviews' done at various times, 1870's, whereby some very good notes were recorded.
These were not used in all of the 'official' Dill histories and so they are worth reviewing. I had hoped to go over to Belfast later this year to have a look at various documents and if time allowed read the Dill notes.
The current Dill family of Donegal, the Nova Scotia family and the New York State family from Caleb Dill who emigrated around 1720-30, all share the same Ydna.
The Dill family of Delaware, emigrated 1740, do not have the same Ydna.
But my Elliott cousins and i have autosomal dna matches multi times to both lines.
There are actually a couple of Dill USA facebook pages running sort of parallel to each other but not in discussion.
When i referred to Raphoe previously it was for the District and i generally do this for USA contacts. Rather than initially explain Townlands, as these can be very confusing to some unfamiliar with them, particularly somewhere like Fanad, that an old record may have as Fannet.
I use the term Raphoe to indicate the various families living south of Letterkenny in the Laggan Valley [supposed to be John Dill at Allsaints, Newtowncunningham] or those North of Letterkenny in the Lower Fanad area, Ramelton, Milford etc.
The Townland of Magheradrumman, Lower Fanad was where a number of families lived including the Dill & Reagh family.
Reagh is a very rare name but it is not connected to the Rea family although many genealogy sites [one well known one in particular] do a standardisation of the surnames so later the Reagh name to Rea.
Ydna shows there is no connection, although it is true that in the USA at times the Reagh have morphed into a number of spellings, Ray, Wray, more importantly Rhea [the vast majority of these in America being Donegal Reagh's] but the odd Rea too.
Reagh is important to the Dill line as i believe there is a very old marriage tying the two families, that has a long standing effect.
When the Dill family splits into the two branches [c1640-50], the Raphoe and Fanad lines, the Reagh family does the same and they live within very close proximity in both locations.
When they emigrate too, first to the USA 1720-40, then Nova Scotia, 1760's, the two families are again found together, and even intermarry again.
I asked a number of Rhea family in the USA and the Dill family in Nova Scotia to check their dna matches for the others name. Each came back saying they had multiple matches.
This would appear to show the old connection from back in Donegal.
However there is a third Ramelton area family usually found with them, the Neely/Neily's.
Its quite possible there are more families tied to them.
There is a history of the Neely family, called the 'Neely's of Neelytown, New York'.
There is a Presbyterian Church Baptism roll for 1741, i think it is, and each family is baptising a new child born as first generation in America, all listed on the same page.
There are Hunter's on the rolls too.
I think it would be reasonable to assume some of the other families listed have Donegal connections too.
