Constantine Dillon
New Zealand settler (1813–1853)
Constantine Augustus Dillon (14 September 1813 – 16 April 1853) was an officer in the Royal Navy, the 16th Lancers, and the 7th Dragoon Guards, a prominent settler of New Zealand, and the fourth son of Henry Dillon, 13th Viscount Dillon.
Biography
Constantine Augustus was born in 1813 to the 13th Viscount Dillon and his wife Henrietta, daughter of Colonel Dominick Browne, Governor of the County of Mayo. Through his father he was a descendant of both Charles II of England (by his mistress Barbara Palmer), and James II of England (by his mistress Catherine Sedley). Dillon had many notable female relations including Clementine Churchill, the Mitford sisters, and Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle known as The Radical Countess.
Dillon served as aide-de-camp to Lord Durham during his office in Canada, and also served Viscount Ebrington while he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
In 1842 Dillon married Fanny Dorothea Story, the daughter of Philip Laycock Story and his wife Lydia, the daughter of merchant banker Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet. The couple sailed to New Zealand on the George Fyfe, arriving in Nelson on 12 December 1842. On arrival to New Zealand Dillon gained substantial holdings in the Waihopai Valley, known as Leefield, and became a local magistrate.
In 1848 Dillon was appointed civil and military secretary to Governor George Grey resulting in a brief relocation to Auckland. In 1850 he returned to Nelson and was appointed Commissioner of Crown Lands.
“Constantine Dillon” enters the record as new Zealand settler (1813–1853). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Constantine, Dillon and Zealand can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q24700980. VIAF identifies the subject as 315643797. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1813, 1853, 1842 and 1848.
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This entry incorporates text from “Constantine Dillon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.