Freelance Historian

James Horton Dill (1821 -1863)

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The 89th Illinois was known as the “Railroad Regiment,” its men being drawn from the railroad companies and formed in Chicago in August of 1862. Its first major engagement was the bloody affair at Stone’s River, TN, where the conduct of the men lent them instant veteran status. The regiment was again heavily engaged at Chickamauga and Pickett’s Mill, and participated in the capture of Atlanta.

Rev. James Horton Dill, youngest child of James and Ruth (Cushing) Dill, was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, January 1, 1821. He was educated at Yale College and Seminary, entered the ministry in Winchester, Connecticut, where he served six years, and afterward settled in Spencerport, New York. He began there a systematic work of visiting the entire region round about, with a view to awaken a popular interest in the faith and order of the Pilgrims, and chiefly through his indirect agency the large and influential Plymouth Church of Rochester was organized, and their edifice built. He delighted to make journeys at his own expense and suggestion, as a general missionary of the good cause. One of his contemporaries said of him: “Mr. Dill has done more to establish Congregational churches in Western New York than any other man in twenty years.” He remained in Spencerport nearly eight years, and finally removed to Chicago and became the pastor of the South Congregational Church, when, after a three years’ occupancy of the pulpit, he offered his services to the Army of the Republic. During his pastorate he was long the correspondent of the New York “Independent,” writing under the nom de plume of “Puritan.”

Soon after the breaking out of the war he joined the “Railroad Regiment,” from Illinois, and died in the service of his country. “Pilgrim,” the Chicago correspondent of the New York “Independent,” said of him:

Your friend and my predecessor, Rev. J. H. Dill, has fallen in the service of his country. It was from motives of patriotism that he entered the army, having said to the writer that he “could not bear to have the war come to an end without having had a hand in it.” Just before Forefathers’ Day he was sent home on business of the regiment and was here taken sick, the seed of the disease having been planted in camp life. But as his leave of absence was wearing away, he started back, and at
Louisville was ordered home as unfit for service. Back again, his disease became more malignant. Meantime, there came the report of the battle at Murfreesboro, In which his division was engaged. He was very restive from a desire to get back, and when the news came that his regiment had suffered much, he would resist no longer.

He feared his men would think he was staying away unnecessarily. He started for Louisville, where he took the “Lady Franklin” for Nashville, and died on board, January 14, near the destination of the boat. A gentleman from this city, who had gone down to look after a wounded son, took the remains in charge to bring home, but as yet he had not arrived, the son having come on before with the tidings. Mr. Dill seems to have had a rare preparation of late for his great change. Just before his acceptance of the Chaplaincy he came into the prayer-meeting and said that it was a more serious business than he had supposed to enter the army. The arranging of his business and domestic affairs, as though he might not come back, he said, had led him to a self-examination and to a new consecration to Christ, and now he had great peace and joy in him. He wrote back to his associate correspondent for the “Independent: “I am walking with God every day, and it is all the sweeter to walk with Him when so few around me are companions in that way.” His last line to his wife, written the Sabbath evening before his death was: “Do not be concerned about me; only pray that I may come into full communion with the mind and heart of Christ.” The lady who took care of him on the boat reports, as we might have expected, that his death was triumphant. Mr. Dill will be greatly missed by the ministers of the Puritan churches here. In their ministers’ meetings, he always had some sprightly original thoughts. He was almost utterly devoid of anything like censoriousness or sectarianism. He was a true and good man.

Mr. Dill was one of the most earnest and useful men in the Congregational denomination, either East or West. His efforts for the building of new churches, his practical usefulness in conventions, councils and committees, his industry in gathering the statistics of the denomination, his constant, unremitting services in the general cause of Congregationalism, made him one of the staunchest pillars of the Western churches. He was a man of vigorous mind and body, energetic will, genial disposition, ever ready to do a kindness, shrinking from no labors, excellent in council and possessing a rare ability for organization and administration.