Richard H. Dillon
Through all his career Mr. Dillon has quietly followed the vocation of farmer. Since he left school each recurring spring has meant to him a time of opportunity, the planting for the later harvest. Many of his hopes have had fruition, as well as his crops. He has been prospered, has performed his share of the responsibilities that come to every man and the extent of his riches is not to be measured alone by his material store.
Concerning the family of Mr. Dillon it may be said that his grandfather was also Richard H. Dillon, and was probably born in one of the southern states, of Irish ancestry. His death occurred in Ohio. He married Elizabeth Unthank. They lived in Clinton County, Ohio, for some years, and in 1848 moved to Madison County, Indiana, where they were among the early Quaker settlers. Of their children, the youngest son, Oliver, lived to be sixty or sixty years of age and died near Indianapolis, and Allen became the father of Richard H. Dillon.
Allen Dillon was born in Clinton County, Ohio, March 13, 1836, and was twelve years of age when the family moved to Madison County, Indiana. There he grew to manhood, and for a number of years conducted a saw mill, did carpenter work, lived on a farm which he owned. In 1856 he moved to Grant County, and lived in this county until his death on January 3, 1899, passing away in Fairmount. In 1857 Allen Dillon married in Fairmount Township Kaziah Henly, who was born in North Carolina in 1832, and came north from Randolph County, North Carolina, to Grant county with her parents in 1837, and continued to reside in Grant County either in Fairmount Township or the city until her death in 1911. Her parents were staunch Quakers whose ancestors came to America with William Penn, and Allen Dillon was also of that faith. She was the mother of two children, one of whom died in infancy.
Richard H. Dillon was born on the old home farm in Fairmount Township, August 14, 1858, received his education in the public schools and Purdue University, and has always followed the vocation of farming. He built his present good brick home at 919 North Buckeye Street in Fairmount in 1891. He and his wife own seventeen acres of land in an adjacent section, also another tract of forty acres in Fairmount Township and valuable farm lands in Marshall County, Indiana.
Mr. Dillon was married in Grant county to Alice R. Coahran, who was born April 4, 1861. When she was six years of age, she moved to Madison County, Indiana, with her parents, who were John and Susan (Hammond) Coahran. Her parents lived on a farm in Madison County until 1879, when they moved to Fairmount City, and here they both died, the father at the age of eighty-four and the mother at the age of seventy-two. They were also of Quaker religion.
Mr. and Mrs. Dillon are the parents of one child, Mary Allen, born July 14, 1892. She received her early educational advantages in the Fairmount public schools and the Academy, and is a member of the class of 1914 at Earlham College at Richmond. In politics Mr. Dillon is a Republican voter.
Submitted by: Gina Reasoner