There are three towns named Dillard in the United States: one is in Missouri, and I have no idea which branch of the Dillard family is honored there. The second is in Rabun County, Georgia, and was named after the Revolutionary Soldier John Dillard (1755-1842) who moved there in the 1820's, while the third is in Douglas County, Oregon, and was named after a grandson of that same John Dillard.
I have not been to the Oregon Dillard, but a picture sent to me indicates that it is small, not unlike its namesake in Georgia. The Dillards in Georgia and Oregon may have prospered, but they apparently did not have the knack of picking a town site which would later grow into a major metropolis.
When some Dillards made the final migration westward to Oregon, they were, in a sense, only following a family tradition of many generations, one shared by most American pioneer families. George Dillard, the Founder, migrated from the British Isles to Virginia. His descendants soon moved from coastal to inland Virginia. The parents of John Dillard of Georgia moved from Culpeper County to Pittsylvania County, Virginia, and later John himself moved on to Washington County, Tennessee, then Buncombe County, North Carolina, and finally Rabun County, Georgia.
The movement continued as the three elder sons of John Dillard of Georgia broke away from their father and the rest of the family. Thomas left the family nest quite early and went off to Arkansas. John Jr. went to Kentucky, then to Monroe County, Tennessee, and finally to another part of Georgia. William F., the author's ancestor, went with John Dillard Jr. to Kentucky and Monroe County, Tennessee, but after that parted company with him and went west to Greene County, Missouri.
Why all this movement? The answer is probably very simple: land. In a society where the occupation of most people was farming, land was all important. Young men starting a family wanted their own farm; land was essential for them -- for making a living and also for establishing their status in society. If land was not available, or if what land was available was unsatisfactory, migration was the necessary way to start adult life and to become more prosperous.
In 1837, William F. Dillard, third son of John Dillard of Rabun County, Georgia, left Monroe County, Tennessee, and moved to
William F. Dillard purchased 320 acres in Missouri. How much land, if any, the young couples just listed were able to get has not been traced. Their farms must have left something to be desired, either in quantity or quality, for it was not very many years before they moved on. In 1850, it was advertised that Oregon land was offered free in return for only four years of residence and cultivation, an offer the young couples eventually found tempting. None of them started west immediately, and so for all we know there may have been other reasons for the migration. It is intriguing that only the eldest four children of William F. Dillard went west, while the younger children stayed in Missouri with their parents. This reminds one of what happened a generation earlier, when the three elder sons of John Dillard broke away from the family, but the youngest children stayed with their parents and eventually moved to Rabun County with them. There may be stories here, but apparently there is no hint of them now.
The first Missourian Dillard to go west was the Rev. John McCord Dillard (b. 16 Aug. 1813, d. 12 June 1893), a "farmer, mechanic, and Presbyterian minister". It is reported that he came home one day from a series of evangelistic services and found that a cyclone had damaged his farm. This decided the family on leaving, and in 1850, in three wagons which he made, they crossed the plains, arriving in Oregon on 15 October, 1850, in not very good condition or spirits. Snow had come while they crossed the mountains, giving the cattle no proper grazing, and all the animals but one had died from eating rhododendron.
The family made do as best it could, with Jane Martin Dillard working as a seamstress in a local store. She was paid $10.00 a day for making men's buckskin trousers. John went off to the gold fields, and did well enough to return with $800 in gold dust, with which in 1856 he purchased 640 acres in the valley of the South Umpqua River, the site of the town of Dillard. There, he later organized a Presbyterian Church, and a private school, and became the first postmaster.
Stephen Dillard (b. March 1819, d. 31 March 1867) was the next to catch the westward itch. He set out in 1852, serving as captain
Before Stephen was to try again, Samuel Dillard, also a preacher, became the next brother actually to reach Oregon. He arrived there on 16 August 1853, and settled in Lane County, some sixty or more miles from brother John in Douglas County. Perhaps there was no more land at Dillard, but since the brothers did not go out to Oregon together, one suspects that their living so far apart was not accidental.
In 1856, another expedition to the west was organized, a monstrous wagon train of something approaching 60 wagons. Stephen Dillard became captain of one half of this train, with his brother-in-law Horace Snow captain of the other half. They left Missouri in April and moved slowly across the plains.
This time, however, the expedition turned south, away from the brothers already in Oregon, and headed for California. Stephen bought a farm in Petaluma. He later moved for a time to Lane County, Oregon, where Samuel had settled, but eventually returned to Petaluma. The Snow family stopped some miles west of Petaluma, in Lake County, California, where Horace Snow died soon after arrival. Sarah Love Dillard Snow remained there the rest of her life, some of the children staying in California, others going back to join their siblings who had stayed in Missouri.
Two children of this period, George Milton Dillard, son of Stephen, and Molly Snow, granddaughter of Horace Snow, in later years told stories about these transcontinental treks (although one wonders how accurate the tales are, considering that George was seven and Molly five at the time). They reported that movement was slow and arduous for the large Dillard-Snow wagon train. It was difficult to average even fifteen miles a day. Besides, Stephen Dillard maintained a strict discipline throughout the train, which included resting and not traveling on the Sabbath. George also remembered that his father "used a yoke of three oxen on each of the three wagons and he never worked one yoke two consecutive days."
Both children remembered the Indians, who hovered around the wagon train a great deal, but were generally not hostile. Molly remembered their begging for bacon, and also how they ate the pioneers' brown soap; "while they chewed on it the froth & soapsuds would form around the mouth & hang on their chin till they were a comic sight." George remembered a man who got an arrow through his thigh, and another time when an Indian was detected stealing a
Later stories had it that one evening when the children were called in, one of the young Snow girls had vanished and was never seen again, presumably captured by the Indians. However, neither of the eye-witness accounts mentions this, although one does recall the discovery of the body of an unknown girl.
Both children also remembered that there were beads to collect in the ant hills along the way. George thought they were beads lost by the Indians and hidden away by the ants, but Molly thought the ants either found or made the beads, and the Indians "would collect the beads of shades and bead moccasins in the most delicate shading that no educated artist could imitate."
Needless to say, our western pioneers went to work to populate the new territory. Mary Love Dillard and Horace Snow had fourteen children, most of whom stayed in California. There were eight children in the family of Stephen M. and Julia Renshaw Dillard, five for Samuel Dillard and Elizabeth Julian, and three for John McCord and Jane Martin Dillard. Most of these had children, and the number of present day descendants must be very large.
Who knows? Maybe one of these days, someone out there will arrange to have a western Dillard reunion at Dillard, Oregon!
Sources of information: Shirley Clayton, "Pioneer Stories", manuscript at Dillard, OR; George M. Dillard, "Wagon Train Pioneers", The Register, Eugene OR, 18 July 1931; Genealogical Records of Oregon Pioneer Families, Compiled by Genealogical Records Commission, Oregon Society D.A.R.; Mrs. Sam Miller, "Recollections", manuscript in Douglas County, OR, Museum; Molly Snow Norman, manuscript letter of recollections of the trip west, formerly in possession of Thelma Snow Van Winkle; Oregon Donation Land Claims; Fay Hampton Robertson, "The Dillards of Dillard Road," Lane County Historian, XVI, # 1, Spring 1971, pp. 12 ff.