Rev. Richard Dill (Usher’s Quay)

Biography

When Richard Dill was refused permission to visit a gravely ill Presbyterian soldier at Islandbridge barracks in Dublin, Ireland, he took the dispute beyond the hospital. He petitioned military authorities, raised the issue before church assemblies, and used the press to campaign for Presbyterian access to servicemen. His 1858 book, The Presbyterian in the Army and Navy, presented his own account of that campaign.

Born at Knowehead on May 3, 1807 in the family chronology, Richard was a son of Rev. Richard Dill and Grace Cochrane. He attended Foyle College, entered the university at Glasgow, Scotland, in 1821 and graduated in 1824. Licensed in 1827, he became the first minister at Tandragee, now in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, in 1829. In 1835 he moved to the congregation at Usher's Quay in Dublin.

There, another dispute drew him into the foundation of a college. Martha Maria Magee, a wealthy minister's widow, left £20,000 to establish and endow a Presbyterian college. Dill served as a trustee alongside John Brown and the barrister James Gibson. The question was not simply where to put a building: the trustees supported a college combining arts and theology, while opponents favored support for theological education in Belfast. Litigation followed, and the eventual settlement provided for a combined college in Derry, now in Northern Ireland.

The controversy also produced James Fleming's satirical poem The Collegiad. Dill appears among its principal combatants, holding a will and a Chancery bill. Those imagined weapons captured the legal character of a struggle that had become public and bitter.

Dill did not live to see the college open. He died unmarried on December 8, 1858 at Eccles Street, Dublin. The Presbyterian Historical Society describes his own contribution as a bequest valued at £7,000, including his library and much of his estate. The money supported teaching and student bursaries. In November 1860, the college's builder, Matthew M'Clelland, presented a portrait of him. Magee College finally opened on October 10, 1865, with Dill's bequest among its sources of support.