Moment in Time (August 24, 2021)
Horace Dodge was an automotive pioneer who along with his brother John founded the Dodge automobile company in 1914, after they served as an exclusive parts supplier to Ford. The brothers became major stockholders in Ford and became incredibly wealthy as a result. Dodge married Anna Thomson, a Scottish immigrant, in 1896.
The 1918 flu pandemic was one of the deadliest in history. In particular, the second wave of the pandemic infected 500 million people worldwide and killed an estimated 20 to 50 million victims—more than all of the soldiers and civilians killed during World War I combined. Historians now believe that the fatal severity of the second wave was caused by a mutated virus spread by wartime troop movements and the lack of quarantine mandates.
Anna Dodge Dillman is shown with her husband Hugh Dillman and his family on the lawn of the former Bush
mansion on Roxbury Road in Marble Cliff. Anna was the former wife of the Dodge automobile co-founder,
Horace Dodge. The heiress purchased the Roxbury mansion as a residence for her new husband’s family.
During the pandemic, both Dodge brothers caught influenza on a visit to the New York Auto Show. John did not recover and died in January of 1920. Horace died the following December from complications of the flu and left his entire estate to Anna. In 1925 Anna and John’s widow Matilda sold their holdings in the company and shared a $146 million profit. Anna Dodge shrewdly invested her share in tax-free municipal bonds, which netted an income of $1.5 million per year for life. Various estates, jewels, and art collections were included in her vast wealth, and she continued to be one of the wealthiest women in the country right up to her death in 1970 at the age of 103 (there is some inconsistency with her age as there are 3 different birth dates listed in different records).
The following year Anna married Hugh Dillman, a Broadway and silent film actor who also worked as a Navy recruiter in WWI. Dillman was born in Chesterfield, Ohio, as Hugh Dillman McGaughy and was 14 years younger than Anna. The couple decided to tear down the mansion (called Rose Terrace) that she and Horace had built in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and build a new Rose Terrace. The mansion housed many historical items, such as chairs that belonged to Marie-Antoinette, a piano that had been played by the children of King George III, a jewel coffer that had once stood in the bedroom of Russian Empress Maria Feodorovna, and a bureau made for Catherine the Great of Russia.
Dillman's family lived in Columbus, and in 1928 Anna Dodge Dillman purchased the mansion at 1550 Roxbury Road, previously owned by Samuel Prescott Bush and his wife, the grandparents of former President George H.W. Bush. The reason for the purchase of the Marble Cliff home was to provide a residence for Dillman's relatives, the McGaughy family. This photo shows the family on the west lawn of the Marble Cliff home, circa 1930. In the front row are Hugh Dillman, his brother-in-law John Love, and his nephew Blaine McGaughy. In the middle row are Anna Dodge Dillman, Hugh's mother Hannah, and his brother Max, Standing are his sister Mary McGaughy Love, Max's wife Rose, and his sister Louise. Anna and Hugh are also shown in the inset photos at the right.
By 1940 the marriage had soured, and in 1947 Hugh Dillman wanted out, despite an annual allowance of $100,000, fancy cars, gifts, and a $6 million trust fund. The couple divorced, and Anna reclaimed the name Dodge as her own. The home at 1550 Roxbury Road was sold to the Carmelite Sisters.