Mary Dillon: her life was a romantic career
Not many people live to be 100 years old, though it is more common these days. Mary Dillon died in her 101st year, in 1940. Much was made of her age − the Te Awamutu Courier described her life as a ‘‘romantic career’’ and many other newspapers ran stories about her life. She was born Mary Foley in County Mayo, and was a child in Ireland during the great famine.
Even late in life she could remember how America sent shiploads of Indian cornmeal to save the starving in Ireland. Mary went to America when she was ten years old, and lived in New York for eight years with an aunt. She had clear recollections of the celebrations which marked the laying of the Atlantic cable in August 1858.
When Mary was 18 she returned to Ireland and married Michael Dillon. Accounts of the next few years have discrepancies, but it seems that while Michael emigrated to Australia, Mary returned to America when the Civil War was drawing to an end. She was there when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.
Michael had enlisted in Sydney in August 1863 as a member of the 2nd Waikato Militia. When he took up his land grant at Te Rore, Mary joined him there and helped run their farm.
Their three children were born there: Mary Catherine (Katie) in 1867, Eveleen in 1869 and Thomas in 1875.
In about 1878 the Dillons moved to Cambridge where Michael established a carrying business with four horses and a dray. He died in 1908 after catching influenza which developed into pneumonia.
Mary and her unmarried daughter Katie moved to Hamilton and lived close to Thomas and his wife, in Nixon St. Eveleen was also widowed in 1908; she lived in Abbotsford St where she set up a school. (Eveleen Chainey was the subject of The Dead Tell Tales in July 2018.)
Mary evidently loved the Te Rore farm, and in 1921 Eveleen took Mary on a road trip with her grandchildren to celebrate her mother’s 80th birthday. Eveleen wrote a lyrical piece for the Waikato
Times (Supplement January 29 1921) describing ‘‘accomplishing the desire of [Mary’s] heart, namely, a peep at her old farm home . . . She had not looked upon it for about 30 years, and there are so few yearnings of the human heart which lie in our power to satisfy, that this trip in the bright December sunshine, towards the blue hills, was a real joy to us all, and she was as blithe and happy as any of the party’’. After motoring through cuttings and creeks, past green slopes where ‘‘flocks lifted contented heads’’ and Pirongia ‘‘towered above us, majestic, blue, glorious of outline’’, they reached the old homestead ‘‘among many trees, some planted by the grandmother, and others by our successor . . . What a welcome for the dear old soul known and beloved by those in her prime, when, with her life-mate, she ranked among that glorious little army of pioneers, who, undauntedly fought on against Maori War privations, hardships, monotony and toil that had neither reward not market. . . ’’ Mary Dillon’s ‘‘eager quest of the dear old eyes’’ found trees that she had planted long ago.
Mary outlived her son Thomas. He had been an agent for NZ Loan and Mercantile Agency but died in 1934 after a long illness.
On her 100th birthday in December 1939, Mary Dillon received congratulations from His Majesty the King as well as numerous gifts and messages; she cut a birthday cake decorated with 100 candles. Bishop Liston and Monsigneurs Cahill and Ormond came from Auckland to congratulate her, and mass was celebrated at her home.
Mary Dillon died eight months later. The Waikato Times reported that ‘‘up till her death she enjoyed good health and took a lively interest in world affairs’’ − as well she might, having been immersed in major events during her long life. Mary Dillon was buried in Cambridge Cemetery at Hautapu with her husband Michael. Their daughter Katie was buried with them just nine years later.