October 25, 2026
In December 1860, a local newspaper named Miss Maggie Champion on a collection committee for Belleville's newly organized Benevolent Society. The committees were to gather and distribute money and clothing for people in need. It is a brief civic notice, but it gives Maggie a public role outside the family biographies that later remembered her mainly through her marriage.
The 1896 profile of Dr. Federal Champion says his daughter Maggie married J. M. Dill and had one daughter. The same profile names Mary, Belle, Jane, and Frank as the other children it remembers. Patience's 1892 obituary says she had six children, four daughters and two sons, and that Jane alone survived her. It does not name the children who had died by then. Maggie was therefore deceased by Patience's May 1892 death, but the sources reviewed here do not provide Maggie's birth or death date.
Other newspaper notices provide a possible glimpse of Maggie's daughter. A July 1892 probate brief names Arabella Champion Dill as Patience's granddaughter and J. M. Dill's daughter. An August society column calls Miss Posie Dill the niece of Mrs. W. H. Snyder. The 1896 biography says Maggie and J. M. Dill had one daughter. These records make Arabella a strong candidate for that daughter and Posie a possible name used for her, but no single item directly joins all three names.
Maggie's brief appearance on a charity committee is a modest but concrete detail: she was part of a group organizing practical aid in Belleville. The larger family relationships come from later sources and remain attributed to them. Her own birth and death dates, and a direct record naming Arabella as her daughter, are still open research questions.
December 14, 1860 Benevolent Society report
July 15, 1892 probate brief naming Arabella Champion Dill