General Notes

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It is unclear whether the below mentioned John Dille is the same as John Dille Sr since the d dates are clearly 100 years prior to when this John should have been born.  However, it is lik ely that this John Dille Sr is a descendant of the John Dille mentioned below but the links h ave not been connected.


Excerpt from "The Dille Family Three Hundred Years in America":

John was apprenticed out to a friend in Salem, where he is mentioned in 1659 court records .  Also, Essex County, Massachusetts, records show that John Dille made a deposition, "aged a bout twenty-one years", in 1664.

John left Essex County, Massachusetts, in 1664 and moved to Staten Island, New York, with oth er settlers from Massachusetts.  There they lived among a number of French Huguenots.  State n Island was quite a "melting pot" during this period, being inhabited by the Dutch, French , Walloons (Belgian Protestants), and English.

John was a charter member of the Puritan Colony that founded Woodbridge, New Jersey, in 1669.

In the autumn of 1665, Sir Philip Carteret, who had been appointed Governor of New Jersey i n 1664, published the "Concessions and Agreements of the Lords' Proprietors" which established d freedom of religion in the new colony.  This was the motivating cause for the establishment t of the permanent settlements of Piscataway, Woodbridge, and Elizabethtown.  A single result t of the distribution of copies of "The Concession" in New England was the arrival in new Jer sey of John Pike, Daniel Pierce, and seven associates from Newbury, Massachusetts.  They ente red into an agreement on December 11, 1666 whereby on December 3, 1667 they received from Gov ernor Carteret and some of the Elizabethtown associates a grant of land, embracing what is no w the township of Woodbridge, New Jersey.  They, as the representatives of 57 families, on Ju ne 1, 1669, were granted a charter creating a township covering six miles square, named after r their pastor, the Presbyterian John Woodbridge, of Newbury.

Most of the settlers were from Newbury and Haverhill, both in Essex County, Massachusetts, bu t a few families had come here with Governor carteret by the ship "Philip" which had arrive d July 29, 1665.  The aforementioned John Pike was the ancestor of General Zebulon Montgomery y Pike (1179-1813), who discovered Pike's Peak, Colorado, and who was killed in the War of 18 12.

The 57 Woodbridge freeholders drew for the town lots in 1669.  The land had previously been l aid off, and the lots varied in area from 15 to 448 acres.  Some of it was upland and some me adow (bottom).  At the drawing for town lots John Dille drew a 94 acre lot on Papiack Creek .  As the record states, "John Dilly with the two Pierces and several others occupied lots ac ross the Papiack on the Upland beyond the meadows".  The Pierces were prominent men in the Col ony.  In the above quotation John's name is given first, indicating that he had considerable e standing in the community, though only 24 years old.

In 1670 Papiack was a sizeable stream, but has dwindled to a brook.  The first highway ran do wn by the kirk green over the Papiack.  The Presbyterian meeting house was built on the gree n in 1675.

It is not known exactly when John married his wife, Sarah, but it was before 1673.  John an d Sarah Dille were Presbyterians, and their descendants for several generations were of the s same faith.  This may tie in with a family tradition that the Dilles were originally from Scot land, a country where this Calvinist faith was widespread.

The New Jersey Archives contain the record of a number of transactions involving John Dille y between 1669 and 1683.  The surname is spelled variously, Dille, Dilly, Dilley, and Dillie .  Genealogists all know that this is typical for the records of this period.  Law clerks an d others spelled phonetically and not too well.

The Shenandoah Co land records show John & Catherine Dilley with about 400 acres acquired i n 1773.  Three sales of land occurred in 1778 and 1780, but not all the land was sold.