Her father, Charles Abbott, was a doctor in Maine and Hattie met Dahlman at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation where he was working at the time.

While mayor of Chadron, Dahlman formed a friendship with a successful young lawyer from Lincoln named William Jennings Bryan.

For the next several years, the pair maintained contact, with Dahlman raising funds in Chadron for Bryan's 1892 campaign for re-election to Congress.

Religious leaders throughout the city started referring to "Dahlmanism",[12] which according to a period newspaper called the Omaha Bee, "exposes the most sacred interests of morality and public order.

[15] In what was called the "Dahlman element", the mayor gained a great deal of support from breweries across the state, but failed to significantly challenge Aldrich.

Dahlman led the battle to gain the city's autonomy and was accused of wanting to "secede" Omaha from the state of Nebraska.

Other major accomplishments of Dahlman's mayorship included the city's purchase of the Florence Waterworks, the gas company and formation of the Metropolitan Utilities District in 1921.

[18] Dahlman was lambasted for his response to the disastrous Omaha Easter Sunday Tornado of 1913, when he refused federal aid and contributions from people across the country.

[19] After keeping the mayorship for three terms in a row, Dahlman lost the 1918 election to Edward P. Smith, a reformist Democrat who was supported by the powerful Omaha Church Federation and the Douglas County Dry League.

Later a grand jury found suggested that the "vice element" or Dennison's men, had assaulted women while in blackface, to raise racial tensions in the city.

Ethnic Irish were involved in an earlier riot in Greektown, resulting in attacks, burning of buildings and Greeks' leaving Omaha.

Contemporary historians believe that Dennison, acting on behalf of Dahlman, contributed to the poisonous atmosphere in the city, if not to the specific event.

In 1964, Dahlman was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners, cited as "the Cowboy Mayor of Omaha, cattleman and Sheriff of Dawes County.

[24] Jim Dahlman makes an appearance in the historical novel Kings of Broken Things by Theodore Wheeler that is set in Omaha during the era of Tom Dennison's control.

The novel depicts the Omaha Race Riot of 1919 and an attempt to fix the municipal election of 1918 when Dahlman lost his re-election bid.