Dr. John T. Dollahan and Rural Dentistry in Lawrence County, Illinois
In rural America between about 1870 and 1900, dentists often served communities in a practical and irregular way rather than functioning like the modern family dentist. Regularly scheduled preventive visits were not generally considered necessary by many families; people usually sought dental care when pain, infection, broken teeth, or the need for an extraction made treatment unavoidable. Because small towns and farming communities could not always provide enough steady patients for a dentist to earn a living from one fixed office, many dentists traveled between towns, kept weekly or monthly office days in different communities, and advertised their schedules in local newspapers. The career of Dr. John T. Dollahan is an example of this pattern.
John T Dollahan was born in 1842, and advertised in the Vincennes Times newspaper that he had opened a dentistry office upstairs in La Plant’s new building at the corner of Third and Busseron streets in Vincennes. No information has been found as to his education in dentistry. He married Isabell Perryman in Lawrence County Illinois.
The 1878 Rural Republican published a notice that J T Dollahan, dentist had moved from Russellville and was located permanently in Sumner Illinois and that he would be at the Buchanan House in Lawrenceville on Monday of each week to meet all those who might desire his services.
In 1883 he announced he had moved his Lawrenceville office to the south side of the Square and would be there every Monday and Tuesday. Dr J T Dollahan announced in May of 1889 that his Sumner office was located upstairs in the “new brick block” south of the railroad. When the 1900 census was taken in Sumner, J T was still a practicing dentist.
Dollahan’s biography offers more than a record of one dentist’s movements. It shows how a professional man adapted his work to the needs of small towns and farming families, and how his regular presence in Lawrenceville and Sumner became part of the county’s early history of local services and community growth.
