VENANGO COUNTY 

PENNSYLVANIA

HER PIONEERS AND PEOPLE
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TWO VOLUMES

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ILLUSTRATED

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VOLUME II
GENEALOGY-BIOGRAPHICAL
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CHICAGO
J.H. BEERS & COMPANY 
1919

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    C.A. GILLILAND, of Oil City, has been a useful member of the community in his public service as well as in his creditable career in business capacities and private citizenship, and he is a representative descendant of a family long honored in Venango county for sterling character and substantial worth.
    Joseph Gilliland, great-grandfather of C. A. Gilliland, was born Nov. 4, 1770, at Faggs Manor, Chester Co., Pa., and upon his marriage to Catherine Cowden in 1794 settled at Lewisburg, Pa. In 1805 he moved to Spring Mills, Center Co., Pa., where he kept hotel, and of his seven sons and two daughters the last survivor was Samuel, a resident of Center county. In religion he was a Presbyterian and active in church work, having been elected an elder of the Sinking Creek congregation in the year 1815.
    Joseph A. Gilliland, son of Joseph, was the grandfather of C. A. Gilliland. Born in 1796 in Chester county, Pa., he removed with his parents to Center county in 1805 and remained there until after his marriage, following farming. In October, 1833, he removed to Venango county, locating seven miles west of Franklin in Canal township, along the Meadville and Susquehanna pike, where he purchased a large farm and in connection with its operation also conducted a temperance hotel. His wife, Nancy (Kerr), dying Feb. 5, 1844, he broke up his home and gave up his farm, taking the superintendency of a section of the turnpike mentioned, and subsequently removed to Franklin, this county, where his death occurred March 10, 1861. Like his father he was an elder of the Presbyterian Church, and he was a Democrat in political conviction. His children were as follows: Mary J., who became Mrs. Smith Kelley, of Pleasantville; Catherine C., Mrs. Isaiah Corbitt, of Franklin; Margaret I., Mrs. Johnson Alexander, who died June 14, 1852; William K.; Joseph S., who died at Davenport, Iowa, in January, 1853; and John Mc., of Franklin.
    William K. Gilliland, son of Joseph A. and Nancy (Kerr) Gilliland, was born March 11, 1828, in Penns Valley, Potter township, Center Co., Pa., and was five years old when the family settled in Venango county, where he received his education. He attended the log schoolhouse in the vicinity of the home farm, and also had the advantage of a year’s instruction in 1838 at a select school taught by his uncle in Center county. When a youth he commenced an apprenticeship to the blacksmith’s trade with a Mr. Balliett in Franklin, and this employer dying before he had completed his term he spent the rest of it with A. B. Walker, of Franklin. In 1851 he was in Illinois and Iowa. In 1853 he moved to Hannaville, Canal township, this county, where he worked a year at his trade, continuing to follow it there until March, 1854, when he settled at Sunville, in Plum township, at which place he made a permanent home. Because of an accident that crippled him for several years he gave up his trade in 1859, and during the remainder of his life was engaged principally in drawing up deeds, conveyancing, surveying and other duties of the same nature, in which association he became widely known. In 1863 he was elected a justice of the peace, in which office he was retained continuously, by re-election, for a period of forty-three years; in 1871 he was elected county auditor, and served one term; in 1883 he was appointed by the court to that office, to fill a vacancy, and was again elected for the full term in 1884. Mr. Gilliland was influential in local affairs, a valued member of the Republican party, an elder in the Sugar Creek Presbyterian Church, to which his wife also belonged, and in every relation of life highly esteemed for his superior qualities. He died at Saegerstown, Dec. 17, 1907, his wife on Dec. 8, 1893.
    On Nov. 4, 1852, Mr. Gilliland married Nancy Foster, daughter of John and Isabella Foster, of Canal township, and of the ten children born to them the following are now living: Effie G., wife of Prof. J. D. Goodwin, of Saegerstown, Pa.; John A., of Hartstown, Pa., engaged in farming; Cyrus A., mentioned below; Mary A., of Altoona, Pa., and William K., who is engaged in faming in Summit township, Crawford Co., Pennsylvania.
    C. A. Gilliand was born at Sunville, Venango county, Nov. 6, 1865. He had the advantage of home training under parents of marked intelligence, and began his first trm of teaching public school Nov. 6, 1882, his seventeenth birthday, at Mout Pleasant, in Canal township, Venango county. During the next fifteen years he continued teaching in the winter, working on farms in the summer season, and in 1896 entered the employ of the South Penn Oil Company as title examiner in Kentucky and Tennessee, while thus engaged making his headquarters at Livingston, Tenn. Later he was transferred to the West Virginia field, where he examined titles for the South Penn Oil Company during the develpment of the great West Virginia oil field, and he is now engaged in that capacity by the United Natural Gas Company of Oil City, whither he removed fifteen years ago. In view of the responsibilities which have been intrusted to him, comment upon his qualifications is hardly necessary.
    Mr. Gilliland has been thoroughly public-spirited in his co-operation in securing the benefits of efficient government, his particular service being in the improvement of educational facilities. He is the oldest member in point of service on the Oil City school board, of which he has been a member twelve years, and is the present chairman of the building committee, with which he was acting in the same capacity during the year 1915, when the Junior high school building was erected.
    In 1895 Mr. Gilliland married Ada Graham, and they have two sons: William Foster, now in France as corporal in Company D, 112th Infantry; and James Lincoln, also in France, as corporal in the Headquarters Company of the 107th Machine Gun Battalion. In 1911 Mr. and Mrs. Gilliland adopted a daughter, Henrietta, who with the two sons mentioned completes their family.

-- transcription by Kate Maynard, 2009