USA > Missouri > A history of northwest Missouri, Volume III > Part 119
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MATERNAL LINEAGE
In his genealogical search at the time referred to when in Southern Ohio, Mr. Dillon found that both his mother's parents were born at Fel- bach, near Stuttgart, in the Kingdom of Wurtemburg, Germany. He found that his grandmother's maiden name was Catharine Elsasser, and that some time in earlier centuries that their ancestors had been given that name because of the fact that they had come from the Province of Alsace-Lorraine.
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RAPPS IN NAPOLEONIC TIMES
Mr. Dillon found that his mother's father, John Rapp, was born at Schlaght, seventy-two miles from Stuttgart. Tradition has it that many centuries before this the ancestors of Rapp had lived in the southern part of Gaul, later known as Aquitania, and probably were among the original Franks of the first and second centuries. And it was said that about the time of the Sicilian Vespers, in 1282, that the Rapps moved across the Rhine to the Kingdom of Wurtemburg. John Rapp's father's name was John Rapp, who had what at that time was quite a large landed estate of 1,100 acres, and his standing with the Austrian Royalty con- ferred on him the task of furnishing herds of cattle to the Austrian armies while fighting Napoleon's armies. The contract with the Austrian emperor was that Rapp should be paid for all the cattle which he attempted to take to the Austrian armies, whether they were delivered or captured by the French armies, but in later years the claims for cattle not delivered were repudiated, because of the very serious financial straits of the Austrian Government. Hence the claims amounting to 200,000 guilders worth of cattle, which had been captured from Rapp by the French army at different times, were repudiated. The last and one of the largest losses suffered by Rapp in this way was when he was driv- ing 80,000 guilders worth of cattle to General Mack, whose army had suddenly been besieged at Ulm by Napoleon. This herd of cattle was captured by Napoleon's troops. In 1807, John Rapp was murdered by the French soldiers.
RETURNED FROM Moscow
John Rapp, Jr., was impressed into the French service when Na- poleon began his march to Moscow in Russia, and Rapp was one of the few of Napoleon's troops who returned from that terrible retreat of the grand army. Later John Rapp enlisted in Blucher's army, and at the Battle of Waterloo was fighting against the soldiers who had killed his own father, and there helped defeat Napoleon. Immediately after this battle John Rapp came to America and settled at Barboursville, Ken- tucky, and later in Lawrence County, Ohio, where Jane Rapp, the mother of the subject of this sketch, was born and raised.
MOTHER OF J. W. S. DILLON
Miss Jane Rapp was married to Isaac Dillon, August 4, 1867, and joined with her husband in building a home and raising a family on their farm in Worth County. Mrs. Dillon was a woman of wonderful perse- verance and had the strict German training from her parents that caused her to train her children not only to be scrupulously honest and honor- able in every respect, but to be considerate of both persons and property. The financial success of her husband was doubtless due almost as much to her efforts as to his. She was an unusually good manager and sacrificed her life largely in her ambition to raise her children in the way she thought they ought to go. Her death on March 27, 1897, at the age of sixty-one years, was due very largely to the fact that she had never found time to rest during her whole lifetime. She had the independent spirit and the efficiency that comes from being raised by the higher class of Germans.
FATHER OF J. W. S. DILLON
The fourth child and the third son of Vincent Dillon was Isaac Dillon, born in Monroe County, Ohio, June 11, 1835, and raised and reared to
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manhood on his father's farm, which is located one mile east of Scott Town, in Lawrence County, Ohio. He taught school near his home and prepared to go to college, but this arrangement was broken into by a desire to go West with his brother, P. H. Dillon, and his brother-in-law, J. Q. Hagerman, all of whom came to Missouri, starting April 12, 1859. At Kansas City, Missouri, P. H. Dillon and Isaac Dillon came near pur- chasing ten acres of land for $1,000; the only thing that prevented them from making this purchase was the fact that P. H. Dillon was attacked with a ease of malaria and was afraid that he could not live there in case they purchased the land. Had they completed this purchase of the ten acres, situated in what is now the heart of Kansas City, Missouri, it would have made them millions of dollars. Isaae Dillon came on to Worth County, Missouri, and taught school in that county and in Ring- gold County, Iowa, until the spring of 1862, having, in the meantime, purchased eighty acres of land twelve miles southwest of what is now Grant City. He was teaching school at the Dry Schoolhouse in the spring of 1862, when the war excitement became so great and the soldiers pass- ing by the schoolhouse and through the vicinity so greatly occupied the attention of, not only the scholars, but the patrons as well, that it was decided to discontinue the school. He immediately went to St. Joseph and enlisted in the Fifth Missouri Cavalry under General Penick, with whom he served until the regiment was mustered out fourteen months later.
During this service he was in many of the skirmishes with Quantrell's guerrillas, and Isaac Dillon was one of the special guard to go to the home of Mrs. Samuels, who at that time was Mrs. James, the mother of Frank and Jesse James, and investigate an attack which was the result of a bomb being thrown into the house and tearing off the arm of Mrs. James. The guard, of which Isaae Dillon was a member, arrested certain parties who were presumed. to have been connected with this deed, and these parties were given a trial by the Military Court, a result of which the writer does not know.
FATHER IN CIVIL WAR
Upon being mustered out of General Penick's Regiment, Isaac Dillon immediately reenlisted at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in the Second Kansas Cavalry, with which he served until the spring of 1864, when he was taken prisoner at Poison Springs, Arkansas, while in a guard of 1,500 men accompanying 300 foraging wagons filled with corn. A part of the guard was surrounded by General Price's army of eight or ten thousand men, and just before being taken prisoner Isaac Dillon was shot through the right arm, just above the elbow; from this wound he suffered several months in the prisons, and on account of it his arm was disabled for life. At the close of the war he was at Camp Ford, Texas, where, on account of their isolation, it was not learned that the war was over for several months, and he continued as a prisoner of the Con- federates. Finally he was discharged and went to New Orleans and embarked on a boat to St. Louis, Missouri, and thenee to Fort Leaven- worth, Kansas, on the Missouri River, where he was mustered out on the Sth of September, 1865, and compelled to prove that he was alive, as his captain had marked him dead in the report of the battle at Poison Springs, Arkansas.
MARRIAGE OF PARENTS
From Leavenworth, Kansas, he returned to Worth County, Missouri, where he taught school until 1867. He was married on August 4, 1867,
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to Miss Jane Rapp, and they settled on the farm which he had purchased before the war, and there underwent the struggle of the pioneers and raised a family of one son, J. W. S. Dillon, and two daughters, Avonia and Greta Dillon. Although he failed in his ambition to be a college man, Isaac Dillon was a student and all his life kept in intelligent touch with all current events. He and his wife were ambitious in that their children have a good education and that their son become a graduate of the Mis- souri State University. Isaac Dillon was a man five feet ten inches in height with very dark hair ; slender, weighing about one hundred and twenty-four pounds; was always active and energetic and directed his business in an intelligent and systematic manner. At his death, which occurred October 30, 1893, it was said by all who knew him that he did not have an enemy among all with whom he had become acquainted while he lived in Worth County. He was fifty-eight years old at the time of his death and his death was brought on by sciatica, which was the result of an attack of grippe about a year previous. He and his wife both had very high ideals of honesty and integrity and were very dili- gent in instilling these qualities into their children.
Besides the above outline of genealogical facts in the Dillon, Jackson, Rapp and Elsasser families, John W. S. Dillon secured about one hundred pages of typewritten data concerning these families that is of interest to relatives, and many stirring events would be of interest to the public were there time and space for relating them.
HAS WATERLOO SABER
Among the mementoes of the Napoleonic period in Europe found on this trip by J. W. S. Dillon was the saber carried by John Rapp in the Battle of Waterloo and probably carried by him on his march to Moscow in earlier years. In 1908 J. W. S. Dillon was again in Lawrence County, Ohio, and was presented with this sword by his uncle, Abner Rapp, to whom it had been presented at an earlier date by Mrs. Naomi Whitley of Huntington, West Virginia. Mr. Dillon now has it at his home in Grant City. At one time on his return march from Moscow John Rapp secured a loaf of bread, which doubtless stood between him and starvation on that march with both winter and the cossacks on their heels and killing the French troops by the hundreds of thousands. Another soldier saw Rapp with the loaf of bread and entered into a saber battle with him for the possession of the bread. The soldier caught Rapp on the chin with his saber, which threw him off his guard; Rapp took advantage of this opportunity to dispatch the soldier and thereby retained the loaf of bread, which may have been the slender thread of nourishment that en- abled him to keep up his march until safe within his own country.
At the close of his genealogical searchi, J. W. S. Dillon and his two sisters returned to their home farm in Worth County, Missouri, in the latter part of 1897, where Mr. Dillon lived for about a year and conducted the farm.
PURCHASES GRANT CITY STAR
One afternoon about the 1st of August, 1898, he drove to Grant City on business. He found, accidentally, that the Grant City Star was for sale and in twenty-four hours he and J. F. Hull had purchased it. They took possession the 1st of September, J. F. Hull taking active charge. J. W. S. Dillon closed out his stock and other farm property, rented the home farm and he and his sisters moved to Grant City, December 26, 1898. In February, 1899, Mr. Dillon purchased Mr. Hull's interest in the Star and from that time has been the sole owner and proprietor. After he had
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edited and managed the paper five years, the circulation had doubled from the time of his purchase. Since 1903, the Star has had a larger circula- tion in proportion to county population than any local weekly newspaper in Missouri. Such an accomplishment is not so difficult as it might seem, as Worth County is the smallest in the state and hence the population is more compactly situated near the county seat.
NEWSPAPER POLICIES
Mr. Dillon's newspaper policy has always been to give the best service to its subscribers. He has always been on the square with all of them and their friendship is largely due to his honest dealing and hard work. It has not been his policy to attack unjustly or indulge in personalities, but he has fearlessly stood for justice and right regardless of personal inter- ests, but wraps the mantle of charity about the mistakes of the earnest but misguided. The politics of the paper has been republican from its ยท founding in 1867 and so ably has Mr. Dillon fought the political battles of his party that it has won many victories.
IN POLITICS
In politics Mr. Dillon has been a republican from the time of his first vote, but not so strict that he would vote for any kind of man just because he was on his own ticket. In 1898 he made a short campaign of 21/2 weeks in the Third Congressional District for the republican nomination for Congress. At the convention at Excelsior Springs, August 22d, he was defeated by J. E. Goodrich, a former classmate at the state university. Mr. Goodrich won by one-half of a vote, but was defeated by the large democratic majority in the November election.
CHAIRMAN OF REPUBLICAN COMMITTEE
Mr. Dillon was elected chairman of the Republican Committee of Worth County three successive terms and finally gave up the position because of pressing official duties. At the three elections held while he was chairman of the committee, more republicans were elected than at any other three elections in the history of the county.
POSTMASTER AT GRANT CITY
On December 17, 1903, Mr. Dillon was commissioned postmaster at Grant City to succeed J. F. Okey, resigned. This commission was signed by President Roosevelt. On January 13, 1908, he was re-commissioned by President Roosevelt. On March 18, 1912, he was commissioned for a third term by President Taft. The office is a middle third class office and its receipts have increased by about two thousand dollars a year since Mr. Dillon took possession of the office. He also moved the office into his building on the west side of the square, where he fitted up modern equip- ment. This was in 1904. Again in the beginning of 1915 he re-furnished the office with new equipment in the main, making it one of the best equipped offices of its size in the state. It has been referred to as a model postoffice by inspectors. Mr. Dillon's first two appointments were made without opposition. His third appointment was made after a long polit- ical fight, which was carried up to the President, personally, and to the United States Senate. His excellent record as postmaster saved the position for him. His work was specially investigated by inspectors and by Frank Hitchcock, postmaster general; Charles Nagel, secretary of
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the Department of Commerce and Labor, and by Senator Bradley, of Kentucky, and Senator Bourne, of Oregon. All these gentlemen passed the record as good. His last term will soon expire and he will be suc- ceeded by a democrat.
MARRIED TO MISS FRANCES MULLINS
On June 16, 1909, J. W. S. Dillon was married to Miss Frances Mullins, daughter of Major and Mrs. A. W. Mullins, of Linneus, Mis- souri. Major Mullins and wife were formerly Kentuckians and Major Mullins served with distinction in the Civil war. He has been one of the leading lawyers of the state and is also a banker. Mrs. Dillon is a graduate of Christian College at Columbia, Missouri, and of the Central College at Lexington, Missouri. She specialized in English literature, music and art. Mrs. Dillon is interested in literary work and is active in working for local civic improvements.
ALL PEOPLE TRACE BACK TO FIRST OF HUMAN RACE
An epitome of the nationalities from which J. W. S. Dillon sprang show that his origin is about equally from the English, Irish, French and German races. The analysis of the above branches shows that they are in turn derived from the various earlier nations and tribes of Europe, such as the Franks, the Iberians, the Scandinavians, especially the Danish Northmen, and some of these were descended from the Goths; also the Romans, the Teutons, Saxons are among the races from which the sub- jeet of this sketch descended. All of these in turn would be traced to still earlier nationalities, if history existed, and would go finally to the beginning of the human race. This is merely the history of every human being of the present time and none in America believe in the classes as they used to exist in Europe, but in the merit of the individual.
AMERICAN SPIRIT
As a result of this American spirit most people forget their ancestors. Mr. Dillon claims no merit from his ancestors, excepting that in all of his tracings he was unable to find a single instance of a crime of any sort committed by an ancestor, and all were honorable and honest. Mr. Dillon feels that he is even more American in spirit after having made a study of his European ancestors than he was before he knew anything of them. He has asked that some mention be made in this biography in order that the descent of the average human being may be illustrated.
AMERICA'S BULWARK
Mr. Dillon believes that if Americans will continue to be honest individually and collectively that America will never meet the fate of the republics whose downfall have inevitably resulted from dishonesty and corruption that has gradually crept among the people as they saw how opportunities opened easily where everyone was free to do as he wished. If America will avoid this one pitfall he believes that nothing can destroy the Government.
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