Johnson County KS Archives Biographies.....Tillotson, Byron H. 1850 - 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 October 8, 2008, 4:29 pm

Author: Ed Blair

 Byron H. Tillotson, a leading real estate dealer of Olathe, Kan., is a native 
of Indiana, born in Elkhart, October 28, 1850. He is a son of Charles and 
Eliza Ann (Frink) Tillotson, the former a native of New York and the latter of 
Ohio, born in Sandusky. The father was left an orphan when a child and was 
reared to manhood by an uncle who resided in Toledo, Ohio. He learned the 
tinner's trade in early life and became an expert workman. When a young man he 
went to Elkhart, Ind., where he was married and in 1852 removed with his 
family to Henry county, Illinois, locating at Kewanee where he conducted a tin 
shop. His wife died there in 1855, and in 1859 he came to Shawnee, Kan.., with 
his children, and in 1860 located at Olathe. They made the trip by rail from 
Kewanee to Quincy, Ill., and then down the Mississippi river as far as 
Hannibal, Mo., by steamboat, and from there to St. Joseph by rail, and then 
came down the Missouri river by boat to Kansas City. When they reached Kansas 
City they stopped at the old Gillis House on the levee. Kansas City at that 
time was a mere boat landing. The father opened a tin shop on the north side 
of the square in Olathe where the Olathe Hotel now stands, in a two-story 
frame building which was blown away by a cyclone in 1866. He then erected a 
stone building on the same corner, the walls of which are still standing and 
now a part of the Olathe Hotel. Here he conducted a hardware store and tin 
shop until 1870 when the business district seemed to center on the south side 
of the square and he moved into a store which stood on the present site of 
Collard & Norris' drug store. In 1876 he went to Graham county and took a 
homestead, and shortly after the town of Melbrook was built on his farm. The 
county seat was located there. He prospered and was the owner of seven 
buildings, and just as everything seemed to be progressing satisfactorily the 
town was visited by a cyclone and completely destroyed and blown away. 
However, he remained in that county until his death, in 1901, at the age of 
seventy-three. Byron H. Tillotson has one sister, Alice F., unmarried, who 
resides in Chicago. Mr. Tillotson was educated in the public schools of 
Illinois and Kansas and attended a private school in Olathe, which was 
conducted by Prof. W. W. Deverell in the old Masonic building on North Cherry 
Street. He learned the tinner's trade with his father at odd times and when 
nineteen years old went to northern Missouri where he taught school and 
clerked in a store about a year and a half. He then went to Council Bluffs, 
Iowa, and worked at his trade there for a time, and later worked at Green 
River, Wyo. In 1871 he returned to Johnson county and engaged in the hardware 
and tinning business at Gardner. Four years later he removed to Olathe and 
engaged in the general mercantile business near the Frisco depot. After being 
thus engaged for a year he built a store building where the Masonic Temple now 
stands and conducted a hardware store and tinshop there for ten years. In 1887 
he engaged in the real estate and general insurance business, to which he has 
devoted his time since and has met with success. Mr. Tillotson was married, 
December 31, 1874, at Gardner, to Miss Margaret C. Enyart, a native of Center 
Prairie, Bureau county, Illinois, who came to Kansas with her parents in 1866. 
To Mr. and Mrs. Tillotson have been born eight children, seven of whom are 
living, as follows: Mabel C, married Will J. Stewart, Russell, Kan.; Charles 
C, electrical engineer, Butte, Mont.; Clarence B., real estate dealer, Los 
Angeles, Cal.; Frank H., photographer, Wilcox, Ariz.; Margaret C, teacher, 
Olathe; Elroy E., student, and Mary L., student. Mr. Tillotson has served two 
terms as justice of the peace. He is a member of the Court of Honor and has 
been secretary of his lodge fifteen years. He and his wife are members of the 
Methodist Episcopal church.

Additional Comments:

Extracted from:

HISTORY OF Johnson County Kansas
BY
ED BLAIR

AUTHOR OF
Kansas Zephyrs, Sunflower Sittings and Other Poems and Sketches

IN ONE VOLUME

ILLUSTRATED
STANDARD PUBLISHING COMPANY
LAWRENCE, KANSAS
1915


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