The oldest two-story house in Clinton, the Dorman House sheltered three generations of the Dorman family, whose saga brings a century and a half of American history to life, from the 1849 Gold Rush to the 1990s.
The house, on Franklin Street, was built in 1852, the year Jerubial Dorman returned to Illinois from California. Jerubial had sailed to Central America, traveled across Honduras to the Pacific Ocean, then sailed back up the coast to join the Gold Rush. But when digging for gold proved harder than advertised, he returned by ship around the Horn.
Born in Kentucky in 1818, Jerubial found farming dull, so sought work on flatboats on the Ohio River, traveling to St. Louis, then down the Mississippi to New Orleans. He also took a government job blazing a military road from Boonville, Mo., to Fort Scott, Kansas.
According to research by county historian Tom Colwell, Jerubial remembered passing through Clinton, where he stayed in a log tavern on the northeast corner of the Square with Col. Joe Davis, who had a corn patch where the courthouse is now.
In 1850, according to Colwell, Dorman returned to the Mississippi, purchased part interest in a steamboat and worked as a riverboat captain, running between Quincy, Ill., and New Orleans.
Two years later, he embarked on the sea of matrimony with a widow, Udolpha Miller, in Quincy. In 1856, the Dormans moved to Clinton with their oldest son, Charles Douglas, and opened a general store on the north side of the Square. A second son, William H., was born soon after.
By the time their third son, George Harris, was born in 1857, the Dormans were living in the house at 301 W. Franklin. It originally had four rooms down, bedrooms upstairs and a summer kitchen connected to the back of the house by a porch. As the family grew, a two-story addition was built on to a back corner of the house, and later, a kitchen and a large music room were added.
In 1860, Jerubial was elected county judge, which as the chief judicial officer made him captain of the Home Guard when the Civil War broke out. But in a town where many residents were pro-Confederacy, Judge Dorman’s role as the local representative of the Union was something of a balancing act.
Udolpha Miller Dorman was born in 1830 in Frederick County, Maryland, which like Kentucky and Missouri, was a border state. Udolpha was descended from colonists who grabbed their guns when they heard the Redcoats were coming, and the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution is named in her honor.
Udolpha Dorman, who survived eight pregnancies, died at 76 years of age in 1906 while visiting her daughter, Victoria, in Kansas. According to Udolpha’s obituary, the M.K.& T. Flyer brought her body back to Clinton, where she was buried in Englewood Cemetery.
Jerubial, 12 years older than his spouse, outlived her by four years, dying at 91 years old. His younger brother, Mathew Dorman, fought in the Mexican War, and died in 1892, and is buried at Englewood Cemetery.
The eldest Dorman son, Charles, and the Dorman’s third son, George, both died in 1938. The youngest son, Oscar, died the next year, at age 77.
That left the second son, William H., 84, as the last surviving brother. Also surviving Oscar were the Dormans’ daughters, Miss Emma Dorman, born in 1864, and Victoria Dorman Phillips, born in 1867. Attending Oscar’s funeral with Victoria were her daughters, Miss Udolpha Phillips, and Katharine, who was Mrs. J. Mullaly.
Her grandmother’s namesake, Udolpha Phillips was born in 1903 in Kansas, but moved to Clinton with her family when she was a freshman in high school, living in a house across from the Dorman House. She graduated from CHS, and the family moved to St Louis, where Victoria and her daughters are listed as being from at the time of Oscar’s funeral.
In 1914, Emma organized the Udolpha Miller Dorman Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She lived through two world wars, dying in 1947 at age 83.
Victoria gets the longevity award in the family — she died at the age 97 in 1964 in Clinton, where she returned to live in her childhood home. Udolpha Phillips also returned to Clinton to take care of her mother.
Udolpha Phillips continued to live in the house for 20 years after her mother’s death. Suzanne Bush, among other Clinton residents, remembers when Udolpha would drive her big Cadillac around town, and pick up a take-out meal from the restaurant on the Square where Suzanne worked.
Thom Knott, owner of the Thom Knott insurance agency in Clinton, is the grandson of Victoria’s other daughter, Katherine Mullaly. Thom remembers spending time in the summers at the Dorman House when he was growing up, and said he knew his Great-Aunt Udolpha well when he was a child and a young man.
When Udolpha Phillips needed care, her sister, Thom’s grandmother, moved her to a nursing home. After Katharine died, Thom became Udolpha’s unofficial guardian, he said, visiting her in the nursing home, although she thought he was one of her uncles.
Udolpha Phillips died in 1992, at age 88, in the Westwood Nursing Home in Clinton, and is buried at Englewood Cemetery. Her obituary states that she attended Stephens College in Columbia, and was an interpretative dancer who “received offers from the Ziegfield Follies.”
In Clinton, she was a regent in the DAR, a member of Colonial Dames, served as chairman of the Clinton Centennial, led the Humane and the Historical societies, and was a member of the Episcopal church.
Thom remembers attending her funeral. He also remembers how active his grandmother and his great-aunt were in the DAR, and how hard his grandmother worked to keep the house from falling apart.
Thom, who toured the Dorman House last week to view the work being done, said he is delighted the Henry County Historical Society is committed to saving the historic home.
