♂Daniel De La Haunte

Daniel De La Haunte (died before 18 August 1748) was a settler of Kent County, Maryland, whose will, made in December 1746 and signed with his mark, names four sons and two daughters and no wife. He was in all likelihood the fifth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son John Dillahunty (1728–1816).

On 27 February 1722/3 the Council of Maryland ordered that a boy, John Wild, be taken from the Maryland household of Daniel and Mary, who were his tutors, and placed with his uncle Peter Wild of Queen Anne’s County. The uncle’s petition gave the reason: the boy was “in danger of being perverted to popery by them”.

His will

He was living in Kent County in 1746. On 2 December of that year “Daniell Dellahuntee of Kent County”, “being in perfect health of body mind & memory”, made his will and signed it with his mark, before the witnesses “Arthr Miller”, Ann Younger and Mary Rush, the last two of whom also made their marks. He named his sons Edmon and John as executors. As transcribed in a family history of 1991, the will also names two younger sons, Abraham and Isaac, whom he left in the care of his daughter Mary; a granddaughter, Ann, the daughter of another daughter, who was to have a gold ring; and a Mary Green, whose relation to him is not stated, who was to have the use of a bed, a pot and a cow.

The will names no wife and makes no provision for one; the records do not say whether she had died. A compiled genealogy of 2009 adds that his daughter Mary had married Nicholas Neale, whose own will of April 1746 Daniel witnessed; that rests on the compiled account alone.

He died between the making of the will and 18 August 1748, when it was proved before the deputy commissary, Ja. Calder, on the sworn statement of the witness Anne Younger. The 1991 transcription gives the date of proof as 16 August 1748.

Notes

The will names a son John; compiled lineage papers, citing this will, identify him with John Silas Dillahunty, born in 1728, who married Hannah Neal in 1747. The line from Daniel De La Haunte to Floyd Amatus Delahorne also runs through John Dillahunty (1780–1830) of Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, whose descent from this family is probable but not proved.

Maryland, 1722/3

The printed Archives of Maryland, volume 25 (Proceedings of the Council of Maryland, 1698-1731), page 403, records the petition of Peter Wild of Queen Anne’s County that his nephew John Wild “be removed from the Custody of Daniel Delahuntee and Mary his wife his present Tutors and placed with Peter Wild”, and the Council’s order is dated 27 February 1722 (Old Style, that is 1723). The volume’s name list gives Daniel and Mary Delahuntee at that page only. With the year counted from 1 January, the same day is 27 February 1723. The entry names Mary only as “his wife”; no surname is given for her.

Origins

His parents are not known, and there is no record of his birth or of his coming to Maryland. A printed family history headed “The Dillahuntys” gives him a Huguenot father, David de La Haunte, who is said to have fled Nancy in Lorraine for the Netherlands and then gone to County Sligo in Ireland in 1695, and says that Daniel married Mary O’Hara and came with her to Maryland in 1715, landing at Havre de Grace; the history cites no record for any of this. A lineage application to the Sons of the American Revolution, also a compiled source, gives him a birth about 1700 in “France or Ireland”, an arrival in Maryland in 1715 and a marriage to a wife named Mary between 1715 and 1728, again without a record for those points. The French look of the name is itself no evidence of French origin: the Irish surname scholar Edward MacLysaght^W treated Delahunty as a Gaelic name, Ó Dulchaointigh, “one of those true Gaelic surnames which have a foreign appearance”.