| Thomas and Margaret (Leech) Gilmore emigrated with her father's family to Livingston County, Kentucky in 1816. Here their four eldest children were born. In 1824 then removed to Preble County, Ohio, where five children were born near Eaton. In 1836 they settled near Greencastle, Putnam County, Indiana; there their youngest son was born and there they lived and died. They were pioneers in a new country. Thomas Gilmore had the first wagon in the township. They had the courage to break with the time honored custom of serving strong drink in the harvest field and had the first harvest in that neighborhood without liquor. This led to the abolition of the custom in that section. Margaret Gilmore started the first temperance reform in her county. The boys of this family had to blaze their way to school through the pathless woods by chopping the bark from the trees to mark their path. Nine sons grew to manhood; not one of whom ever used liquor in any form nor profane language; and only two, out of the nine smoked. They were an interesting family of boys and mem; strong in good habits, in good politics, and nearly all legislators in their states. Margaret Leech Gilmore was a woman of a particularly strong Christian character, deeply and genuinely spiritual. Her influence for good was marked in the community in which she lived. Thomas Gilmore, too, came naturally by his religious strength. On his father's tombstone is this chosen epitaph: "An elder in the Presbyterian church." It is a far cry from Craigmiller Castle, Scotland, the ancient ancestral home of the Gilmores, to a log-built puncheon-floored cabin, in the western wilderness in Indiana in early 1800. Just such homes as this, of "plain living, and high thinking," have bulwarked the nation. Clothing was home-spun, food home-grown. In 1840 the neighbors from near and far to the number of 200 had gathered at the Gilmore home to see a young man's train start across the plains. Andrew and Nathan Gilmore and seven sons of neighbors made up the party. Nathan Gilmore, then 19 years of age, never saw his mother again. When news of her death came to him in his California home, almost 20 years later, his children well remember their father's grief which prostrated him for several hours. Three generations of Gilmores lie in the Greencastle Cemetery, Greencastle, Putnam County, Indiana. |
Margaret Leech
Birth