Published Irish records from the early years of the seventeenth century show a grant of lands at Dromore, Magheralin and Tullyish in county Down, all within thirty miles of Belfast, to a John Magill. The grant was part of James I's strategy of Irish subjugation which he formalized with the Act of Settlement of 1613. Our speculation is that this John Magill was born no later than 1585-1590 and he came to County Down in Ulster from somewhere in the lowlands of Scotland in 1613 or 1614. He was an early Presbyterian, as were virtually all of his Scottish countrymen at the time. He built a house on his land at Dromore which he called Gill Hall after his patronymic root and later left it to his daughter rather than Sir John Magill, the 1st Baronet of Dromore, an indication under the laws of the time that he had no surviving sons. We explain that paradox as follows. When the elder John Magill made his will in 1677, he also left his estate lands at Tullyish, later called Tullycarn, to his "servant" John Magill. Servant, in the context of the time was more than a companion, often a younger relative. Although there is no record in this instance of a blood relationship, such servants often took the name of their masters.
Another record of the era tells us that Gill Hall subsequently passed to a Robert Hawkins, who then adopted the name Magill, his mother's adopted, maiden name. His mother Mary Magill was sister to Sir John Magill, 1st Baronet of Dromore. This Mary and her brother Sir John were the children of Lieutenant William Johnston of Gilford (about five miles west of Dromore in county Down), and by extension John Magill, the builder of Gill Hall, was their maternal grandfather Ziebarth, Walter E. Direct connections : Ziebarth-Magill ancestry. New York : Ziebarth Publishing, c1997, pg. 78-79).