Agnes McIlvaine

Wife of John Dickey. However, her origin is unknown. If she was Agnes McIlvaine, she is most likely *not* the same Agnes McIlvaine who was daughter of John McIlvaine, Laird of Grimmet, and Anna Corrie, heiress of Thomastoun, as many people have positioned her. Their daughter Agnes was said to have married a Norris Morrison. No Dickey is named in the much-written-about Corrie-McIlvaine family histories.

However, she and John Dickey do seem to have been associated with, and lived as tenants in the same community in Dunboy, County Donegal, Ireland in a community started by John and James Cunningham, listed as a resident along with a Thomas McIlvaine married to a Jonet Schaw (likely to have been her brother or other close relative).

From Joseph H. Howard's research on the DIckey Family (1996):

"John Cunningham, gent., had received a Patent to 1000 acres of land at Dunboy, in the Precinct of Portlaugh, County Donegal, and 1000 acres at Noyegh, County Donegal, of which he, and James Cunningham, were in possession in 1619. He had there built a house in the bawn of lime and stone, where he and his wife resided, and near the bawn he had built a town, consisting of twenty-six houses, and a good water-mill, all inhabited by Scotch tenants, among these John Dickei and Agnes McIlvain, his wife, a poor relation, Thomas McIlvain, and Jonet Schaw, his spouse, John Duncan, and Mareon Orr, his wife, all late of Glasgow. (Pynnar’s Survey, Inq. and Patent rolls, Donegal, Sir Thomas Phillips, Lambeth Library)"

For this reason, we might speculate that both Agnes McIlvaine Dickey and Thomas McIlvaine were siblings of the John McIlvaine Jr. of Grimmet who left Scotland during the many difficulties of the early 1600s and settled in northern Ireland in Ballymena together.