THE GILLMORE SUPPLEMENT, remarks by William Bruce Gillmore.
Our first Gillmore ancestor in America was one of two brothers who migrated from Northeast Ireland. They were of the McGilmore Clan in County Down. They landed at Charleston, South Carolina in 1765 and settled in that state. Some of the next generation followed the frontier into Eastern Kentucky, and the third generation went on west.
The Gillmore who designed the fortifications of Charleston Harbor may have been one of these families, but I have been unable to establish that fact.
In Western Kentucky lived one who has come down to us as Judge Gillmore. He had a large family, and some of his sons went to Texas, fired by the enthusiasm of Andrew Jackson, Davie Crockett, Austin and others who fought for Texas independence. One of the boys died in the Alamo. He probably signed the muster rolls with his X as his first name is forgotten. Another son who fought in Texas returned to Kentucky and later moved to Sangamon County, Illinois and reared his family there. He was called Captain, but whether the title was real or honorary, I do not know. If there is a record it is in the Archives of Texas. It is not in Washington.
His younger brother, William Gillmore, later joined him in Sangamon County, and there married Jane Nesbit, the daughter of George Nesbit, in 1840. George had died and his family was raised by his brother William Nesbit, who never married.
William Gillmore seems to have been a gay and care-free lad who never learned to read or write, but who had a wide reputation as a fiddler. He would go a days journey any time to play for a dance for which service he received five dollars if the dance broke up at midnight or ten dollars if it lasted until dawn. That seemed to have been more lucrative than working on a farm at fifteen dollars per month.
It is said that while the Nesbit family liked him, they were not enthusiastic about his marriage to Jane. Her Uncle William seems to have forgiven her, as her son Ephriam Gillmore was one of the heirs mentioned in his will. I inherited the William part of my name from him.
Of this union four children were born, my father, Ephriam Bradley Gillmore being the second child.
Jane Gillmore died in 1846, and very soon afterwards her baby, Henrietta died. Jane's sister, Ellen Nesbit, who married Wiley Mitchel, Sr. took Jane Gillmore and raised her. William Gillmore, not being able to care for the little boys, left them with his brother, Ephriam, and went off to Texas. Not being able to read or write, it seems that no one heard from him. Apparently, Ephriam was not surprised at this, because when he found that he could not raise the boys for domestic reasons, he took them to Macoupin County and placed them with a prosperous farmer, one Pasquel Reader. Since Reader was from Kentucky, it is reasonable to assume that they knew something about each other.
The understanding was that the boys were to stay with Reader until they were twenty-one, and were then to each receive a team of horses, a wagon, and a set of harness. That was the customary start that a farmer gave his sons.
In 1867, Ephriam B. Gillmore learned from some friends, the Sacre brothers, home on a visit from Texas, that his father, William Gillmore, had married again in Texas and had several children. They invited him to return with them to Texas and be re-united with his father. After contemplating the apparent neglect of his father, and the fact that they would be strangers, together with the fact that he was contemplating matrimony in a few months, he did not accept the invitation.
In 1916, I went to some expense, having an attorney run down several clues concerning some of the descendents of William Gillmore without success. During the 1920's and 1930's, my brother, Clyde Gillmore, whose work took him into all parts of Texas, found many Gillmores. Some had the red hair and red whiskers and the long face, characteristic of our family, but he found none who knew that he was a descendent of our Grandfather, William Gillmore.
So our knowledge of our Gillmore ancestors is very limited. Father's Uncle Ephriam Gillmore had one son Harvey Gillmore. He visited Father once in Barton County, Missouri, in the 1870's. At that time he and his father still lived in Sangamon County, Illinois. They raised and bought horses and Harvey drove them west and they were sold to traders who drove them west via the Santa Fe Trail.
It was probably about 1868 that my father learned from a Methodist circuit rider who made the Reader home his headquarters for a few days, that he had a sister, Jane Gillmore, living with her Uncle Wiley Mitchel, in Sangamon County. He went to see her, and in 1869, when he was preparing to move to Missouri, he went and got his sister, Jane, and took her with him to Barton County and she lived with us until she died in 1884. I have some recollections of her as a kindly aunt.
In my research, I have been unable to find any connection between our family and the New England Gilmores. Many branches of this family have been ably outlined by Pasquel Gilmore of Bucks Port, Main, in his Genealogy, a copy of which document is in The Library of Congress.
In America, the name has been variously spelled, Gilmor, Gilmour, Gilmore and Gillmore. According to tradition coming down to us from Judge Gillmore of Kentucky, his family always used and preferred Gillmore, and we have always used that spelling.
PASQUEL READER
I feel that this brief record of the Gillmore ancestry would be incomplete without a word concerning Pasquel Reader, the man who raised our Father, and the only father he ever knew. He could remember seeing his real father once as a child.
I write without notes from childhood memory of the stories my father liked to tell, and many names have long been forgotten. Mr. Reader was a man of small stature and wiry constitution who believed hard work was a cure for the ills of the world. They seem to have been Presbyterians of the dour variety. They did not whistle or play noisily on Sunday. They seem to have been a kindly and closely knit family, but without any show of affection one to another. John and Ephriam were carefully looked after as to all their physical needs, but I doubt that they were ever shown any affection.
Mr. Reader was the kind of a man whose word was his bond. He insisted upon strict integrity. Not to keep one's word was an unpardonable sin. He was always called Squire Reader. Whether or not he ever held an office, I do not know, but he settled all neighborhood disputes with the authority of law. All strangers were made welcome at his board and itinerant Ministers were invited to make his house their home while in the vicinity.
He raised one orphan boy who was grown about the time that father and his brother were taken into the home. For many years, he gave shelter to two homeless Irishmen who worked when they were needed, or for other farmers, and did very much as they pleased except for the one restriction that their drinking must be done some place else, and no whiskey was brought to the farm.
The Readers had four children, if memory serves me correctly. There was James who was father's age and they grew up as brothers. They kept in touch with each other, and always addressed each other as Brother. James went to college and after trying the Ministry, became a Physician. He lost an eye in early youth while trimming hedge. He married late in life and had no children. I think that he was practicing medicine in Colorado at the time of his death.
George, the youngest child, also went to college for a while, but it seems that he did not take to hard work. He and father exchanged letters occasionally, always addressing each other as Brother. George had several children. One daughter was married and lived in Kansas City for a while, and visited us several times. George, Jr. lived with us one year in Kansas City and worked there.
There were two girls. One's name was Elizabeth, and it was to get her husband started in business that Reaser assisted him in buying the saw mill, in which John Gillmore was killed. He was sent one afternoon, when they were short-handed at the mill, to assist in carrying lumber from the saw. No one knows what happened, but he fell against the saw and bled to death before help could be summoned. The other daughter married a farmer and they lived in an adjoining community.
When Mr. Reader took the Gillmore boys he had an understanding with their Uncle Ephraim, that they were to be raised as farmers, given the educational advantages of the community, and at twenty-one were each to receive a team of horses, a wagon, and a set of harness. That was the customary way in which a farmer started his sons out for themselves.
Because of this agreement, Mr. Reader never forgave himself for John's death. He had not kept his word. In lieu of John's inheritance, he gave my father forty acres of land, which land father sold for five hundred dollars when he was getting ready to move to Missouri.
When the Civil War was in progress, Mr. Reader was a staunch Southern supporter. In 1863 Union Officers were sent throughout the north holding meetings and encouraging the young men to enlist in the Army. Squire Reader would follow them about, and after they had made their appeal he would ask permission to speak, and then tell the boys the other side of the story.
This practice eventually got the Squire into trouble with the Authorities, and his arrest was ordered. He was locked up in Carlinville. A posse of hot heads undertook to make a jail delivery. While they were battering down the jail door with a telegraph pole, the Sheriff took his prisoner out the back way and put him on a train. Then the boys tore up the railroad track, but the train backed out and was shuttled about and the prisoner delivered to Springfield.
He could be free on his parole, which he refused to give for several months. He was broken in spirit and his health was failing when he gave his parole to save his life. He was so humiliated that he could not live there any longer. He went to Texas and refused to return. He died there at an advanced age.
Before this trouble arose, he sent his own boys to Canada to avoid the draft. Father was approaching his twentieth birthday. Reader felt that he may not have given father all the schooling that the agreement called for, so he sent him to the neighboring community where one of the Reader girls was living. He could live at her house and go to school to the Squire's Nephew, where there was a better school and there would be no danger of his being kept out to help on the farm in case of an emergency. He told Father to consider himself twenty-one and take his inheritance and go away if he wished to avoid the draft.
During that winter at school, Father, the teacher, and the
teacher's brother, a young man who was also a student, planned to pool their resources and start for California as soon as conditions would permit in the Spring of 1863.
So, about the first of April 1863 they left Macoupin County in a covered wagon, with two teams and a saddle horse. They went to Council Bluffs, Iowa and waited there for a party to form for mutual protection in crossing the plains. In due time the train set out, some fifty wagons, under a Captain who with a number of out-riders was taking a herd of horses to the California market. He had previously made several such trips and knew the hazards of the West. They followed the Platte River to Ft. Russel (Cheyenne, Wyoming) then over to Sweetwater, to Evanstone, thence down the valley to Salt Lake City. From there they crossed the range twice and by August came into Paradise Valley, Nevada.
A rancher wanted help to put up River Valley hay which commodity was at a premium. He offered five dollars a day and board. To boys who were accustomed to a wage of fifteen dollars a month, that was real pay. Father decided to stay until haying was done and then with his saddle horse join his partners in California. Their reports on California were not encouraging so he followed the mining camps in Nevada, Idaho, and Montana until he heard that the war was over and it was safe to return home.
(Note: In 1867, When Ephraim B. Gillmore was ready to go home to Illinois from Montana Territory, he took a steam boat at the head of navigation on the Missouri River for St. Louis. It was loaded with miners going to their homes in the east. He left the boat at Brownsville, Nebraska to visit the Coones, Mitchells and other relatives who lived in the vicinity. From Omaha he was able to go by train back to Carlinville, Illinois.)
He got home in May 1867 and found the Reader farm in deplorable condition, so he took over. On Christmas Day of that year he went over to Pittsfield in Pike County and married Mary Emily Hunt, and the next year they lived with Mrs. Reader and father worked the farm.
In the spring of 1869 they, with the Hunt family, got in a covered wagon and with their baby, Lillie, started for Barton County, Missouri.
MORE ON PASCAL (PASCHAL) READER by Don Reader
Paschal Reader was born in 1812, possibly in Tennessee or Virginia. He came to Macoupin County with his parents in 1830 from Overton County (now Pickett), Tennessee. Paschal's father Jeptha Reader took up farming as he had done in Tennessee, and also served as an officer in the state militia during the Black Hawk war. He died in 1839 and his grave is in the Reader cemetary, just outside of the village of Reader, west of Carlinville.
In 1837, in Macoupin County, Paschal married Margaret Rafferty. We have the family bible pages of Paschal, in which he recorded all the birth dates and death dates in the family including his parents, siblings and children up through the 1850's. Alas, no marriage dates were recorded. Paschal and Margaret had the following 10 children, of whom 6 lived to adulthood. The boys who carried on the Reader name were James K. Polk, George Washington, and William Donelson Reader.
Jeptha H. Reader (1839-1842)
Elizabeth T. Reader (1840-????) + A. B. Peebles
Nancy Jane Reader (1842-1899) + John Hagaman (1836-1912)
Martha Emaline Reader (1843-????) + George Orr
Mary Virginia Reader (1845-1845)
James K. Polk Reader (1846-191?) + Lou(ise?) E. Poley
George Washington Reader (1847-1930) + Emily Smith (1857-1926)
William Donelson Reader (1848-19??) + Lucy J. Albin
Harriet Caroline Reader (1851-1853)
Joeseph Reader (1853-1853)
Paschal was a well-to-do farmer in what became Western Mound township, acquiring a large amount of rich farmland from the federal government. He was an officer in the state militia along with his father Jeptha, taking part in the Black Hawk war. He later became a Justice of the Peace, and a state legislator. He was called "Squire Reader" and was known to be a firm but fair dispenser of justice, settling many local disputes with an iron hand. He was also very active in Democratic politics. Although having a large family himself already, he took in two young Gillmore boys, John and Ephraim, whose mother had died and whose father left them with an uncle who was unable to care for them. Paschal raised these two boys as his own, but that is another story.
The Civil War proved to be the downfall of Paschal, as he was very much against it. Whether it was because of his Tennessee origins, his Democratic party affiliation, or concern for his three young sons, he took an active part in protesting the Union Army recruiters. When the Army recruiters came to the area, Paschal would find out where they were and show up. Waiting until the recruiters had finished their appeal, Paschal would stand up and ask the gathered crowd if he could say a few words so they could hear "the other side." Eventually he was arrested for "anti-Union" activities by the sheriff of Macoupin County. While being held at the jail in Carlinville, some hotheads got wind that a Southern sympathizer had been arrested and formed a mob to break into the jail, presumably to lynch him. While the mob battered down the door of the jail with a telegraph pole, the quick-thinking sheriff got Paschal out the back door and onto a train to take him to Springfield. However, the mob heard about this and tore up the tracks in front of the train. The train then backed up all the way to Litchfield before switching to another track to go on to Springfield.
My grandfather, Ernest Reader, son of G. W. Reader, wrote that Paschal was held in "the Old Capital Prison in Washington, DC," but I suspect that he was not taken any further than Springfield. In prison he proudly refused a parole for many months, but eventually acceeded to the wishes of his captors and signed it. He returned home a broken man, in both spirit and health. Resolving to leave Illinois after the war, in 1867 he left by wagon to visit his brother-in-law Joseph Rafferty who had already moved to Lancaster in the Dallas area and to seek land for his family in Texas. However, he caught pneumonia and died there in 1868. He was buried in Texas, but his monument was erected in the Reader Cemetery on the old homestead and is the tallest one there. We have the 1868 diary of G. W. Reader in which he describes not only the day his father left Macoupin County, but also his own trip to Texas a few months later after the family got word that Paschal was ill.
Information from Patty Cook, Oklahoma City, OK.
Ephraim suffered with Bright's Disease (a form of kidney disease characterized by the presence of albumin in the urine) and died while visiting their youngest daughter.
Jacob Hunt and Michael DeVault lived in this area (Pittsfield?) on farms. They lived with Mrs. Reader and worked the farm.
In the spring of 1869 they with the Hunt family got in a covered wagon and with their baby Lillie started for Barton Co., Missouri.