Margaret “Maggie” Gillen Deacon, wife of Superintendent Charles W. Deacon, served as the Matron of the Union Printers Home for 15 years, from 1898 – 1913. She was the first Matron to serve the Home for such an extended period of time.
The daughter of Irish immigrants, and born and raised in Chicago, she met and married Charles Deacon in her early 20s. They had two children who survived past infancy – Henrietta and Proctor. Just like her husband, she was very well-liked at the Home, where residents referred to her as “Mother Deacon.” Unfortunately, her health began to fail in the early 1910s, and the Deacons decided to move to lower elevation in 1913. They moved to California after leaving the Home and opened a restaurant called Deacon’s Cafe, but were there for only a few years. By the 1920 census they had moved back to Chicago. Margaret died in 1920 due to cardiac issues. Her obituary in the Chicago Tribune spoke of her again as “Mother Deacon” and of the love and respect she had from and for printers around the nation.