The Daltons of Kildalton: a Norman-Irish gentry family, Part I

Abstract

The Daltons of Kildalton (Cill an Dátúnaigh), a townland less than one mile north of the River Suir and the Co. Waterford (Port Láirge) border, are a well-known family with a rich and colourful history that has been documented back to fourteenth-century southern Co. Kilkenny (Cill Chainnigh). Such was the status of the family, who had Kilmodalla (Cill Modhallá) as one of their major bases from the fifteenth century, that by the sixteenth century the town had undergone a name change to Kildalton, forever embedding their patronymic in that place, and other areas nearby. Part I of ‘The Daltons of Kildalton: a Norman-Irish gentry family’, focusses on the central family figure of the late thirteen-century, Richard de Antōn, who was Sheriff of Waterford between 1291 and 1293. Richard was almost certainly the forebear of the Daltons of Kildalton, and he first established their place in Co. Kilkenny. Richard’s origins intrigue, as does his surname, but his place among the Irish gentry of the thirteenth century unequivocally connects him to families of high status and power, who came to Ireland (Éire) at the time of the Norman invasions. Y-DNA analysis of ancestors of the Daltons of Kildalton is distinct and also intrigues. Yet, much sense can be made of a common direct paternal genetic ancestry, ca. 1100 AD, with those of Branan-like surnames, whose ancestors also arrived in Ireland among the Norman gentry class.