First Families of Jasper County

Jeremiah Mathew Dillon, A Biography

By 1874

My great Grandfather, Jeremiah Mathew Dillon, was born somewhere in Ireland in 1842 or 43 to Jeremiah and Margaret Dillon. In 1850, toward the end of the potato famine when Jeremiah was 7 and his older brother David was 13, the family immigrated to America. The Dillon's landed in New York and were there when the census enumerator counted them in the Eastern Division of the First Ward of New York City. Jeremiah Sr. was 36 and Margaret was 35. Living in the same house was a family by the name of Dean. They were John 30, Mary 24, Ellen 1 and a fellow named Charles Cayhill. The new Irish emigrants were not liked then, not even by the American born Irish. Times were tough and there was not much work. Many of the Irish of the day joined gangs of New Irish and Old Irish that had a deep hatred toward one another and battles were fought. The New Irish stuck together in the run-down tenements. Many of them migrated west early on and started new settlements. Many worked the many mineral mines of California, Colorado, Missouri, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and other points "out west" There was one mining town in Colorado in the last half of the 19th century that was almost all Irish. It was founded by an Irishman who would only hire Irish.

I'm not sure where Jeremiah's family moved to or when they left New York I suspect they were the Dillon family recorded in the 1880 census in Dakota County Minnesota and that Jeremiah Mathew joined the army serving in the Civil War for the Union, mostly in the Mid Western States around Missouri Kansas and Arkansas.

After the war Jeremiah worked at whatever he could and moved often to stay employed. Such was his pattern the rest of his life. At some point he met Clara Olive Gardner who was born in Effingham, Illinois, July 3, 1857. They were married in Clarksville, Arkansas on June 15, 1871. Clara described Jeremiah Mathew Dillon as having "blue eyes, auburn hair, curly or wavy, medium sized, 5 ft. 5 to 8 inches tall, maximum weight, 160 lbs." She claimed he worked as a "bookkeeper, engineer, saloonkeeper, merchant and jack-of-all-trades". Clara said her father deserted the family after the war and that she eventually took her younger sister and moved to Louisville, Kentucky leaving her older brother Frank and sister Elizabeth on the family farm.

Jeremiah and Clara Dillon were living in Joplin, Missouri in late 1874 when Mary Ellen was born. The twins; Oma and Nova were born in Arkansas in 1876. They were back in Missouri in 1878 when daughter Olive was born.

In 1880 the census taker found Jeremiah and Clara, or Olive, as she preferred, in the young town of Eureka Springs, Carroll County, Arkansas. "Eureka Springs A Pictorial History" published in 1975 by the Eureka Springs Carnegie Public Library Association reviles that a pioneer settler, Dr. Alvah Jackson, first located the site of Eureka Springs in the Ozark Mountains of North West Arkansas. He had been searching for the "Indian Healing Springs" for many years and felt he had found them in 1856 in the mountains west of Berryville Arkansas while he was hunting. He claimed to witness the healing of his young son's eyes after they had been bathed in water from the spring. Feeling the water had healing powers, he began to make use of it in his practice. The spring remained hidden in the wilderness until 1879 when people began coming by the hundreds, in search of "the healing water". The Midwestern Plains Indians had been using the "Great Healing Springs" for centuries. The town grew to become a tourist town, which it remains today, and is still visited for it's healing powers by people from all over the world.

The census enumerator counted thousands including the Dillon family in Eureka Springs by the time he showed up in 1880. Many were living in small wood framed housed on the side of a steep hill and the main street was named Mud Street, probably for good reason. The previously mentioned history of Eureka Springs includes a photograph taken in 1880 of almost the entire town and shows major progress with some larger buildings, some under construction, as high as four or five stories and several businesses along Mud Street. I assume Jeremiah moved to this boomtown for a job.

The family was back in Missouri when Frank was born in 1882 but in October of 1886 James was born in Arkansas. Jeremiah's last child, David, was born in Missouri in December of 1889. That's a lot of moving around but not unusual for the time if one wanted to stay employed. 1889 is the year Jeremiah was killed in a mining accident, probably in Missouri. Wasting no time, on Christmas day that same year, Clara Olive Gardner Dillon married John W McGuire in Eureka Springs.

John McGuire was also a hard working laborer who worked in the mines and smelters in the area where Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri come almost together. John and Clara had three children, Minnie in 1893, Sidney in 1894 and Albert in 1901. They lived in Iola Kansas in 1900 and were living in Fresno California by 1920. John and Clara both died and are buried in Fresno.

Frank Dillon moved to Dinuba, California about the time his mother did. He raised his family and died there.

Nova Dillon married Henry Shea in Iola, Kansas in about 1900. They moved to Edmonds Washington, owned and ran an apartment house and raised their family there.

David Dillon may have joined the Navy as George Marlowe Bumpus inherited his "Navy Colt"

One of the Jeremiah Dillon's daughter's married and moved to Texas but I don't know where in Texas or which daughter.

Having retired, Frank Dillon's son John is living in Fresno California and his sister is living in a near by town. John remembers being told by his father that Jeremiah had to shoot squirrels to feed his family at times. John Dillon has been a great help in researching the life of Jeremiah Dillon and continues to research the Dillon, McGuire and Bumpus families. Without his efforts and knowledge of the family, this biography, as brief as it is, would not have been possible.