Kate’s notes: Gibson’s short biography of Joseph Gilliland was adapted and included in the “genealogical bible” of the Gilliland-Cowden family, An Illustrated Historical and Biographical Sketch of the Descendants of William Cowden who migrated from Ireland to America about A.D. 1730 and of James Gilliland who came from the same land and about the same time by Robert Cowden.  The reason I am providing the reference below is to clarify just what portions of the text were adapted for Cowden’s book and to dispel any misperceptions arising from Gibson’s book that James Gilliland had died before the termination of the Revolutionary War. 
   Regarding James Gilliland’s military service, Cowden writes, “Some corrections of dates are necessary to conformity with statement by relatives.” The adapted portion corrected by Cowden read, “His father, James Gilliland, a native of Chester County, Pennsylvania, was born in 1739. At the age of thirty-eight years, we find him in the Continental army, where he bore honorable part as an officer under General Washington, and where, because of excessive exposure and severity of service, he laid the foundation for premature death, which came to him in 1795.” 

From History of the Presbytery of Huntingdon by William J. Gibson D.D.,  Bellefonte Press Co., 1874.

MR. JOSEPH GILLILAND.
______________________

Mr. Joseph Gilliland was a native of this country, though of Scotch-Irish descent. His father, JAMES GILLILAND, came from Ireland, and settled in Chester county, Pennsylvania, before the Revolutionary war. He served as a soldier under WASHINGTON, and died before the termination of the war from exposure and fatigue in battling for the independence of the country.  He was a strictly religious and pious man, and said to have been an elder of the Presbyterian church.
   JOSEPH GILLILAND,  the subject of this sketch, was born within the bounds of Fagg’s Manor church, Chester county, November 4, 1770. He married May 1, 1794, in Chester county, MISS CATHERINE COWDEN;  and removed to Penns Valley, Centre county, in 1805, where he immediately united with the Sinking Creek Presbyterian church, then under the care of the Rev. WILLIAM STUART. He was elected an elder of the church in 1815, in which capacity he continued to serve till his death with great acceptance.
   Mr. GILLILAND was highly esteemed as a citizen, as well as prominent in the church. In 1823 he was elected a county commissioner, in which office he served for the term of three years. He was also prominent in the management of township affairs; and was the counsellor and friend of the widow and the fatherless. His business, the greater part of his life, was farming. A son, writing of his parents, says:
   “My father and my mother both having had Scotch-Irish Presbyterian training, adhered to it strictly in the training of their children. The child as soon as it could lisp was taught the Mother’s Catechism, Apostles’ Creed, and talked to about God and the Saviour; and as soon as he could read, was required to commit to memory the Shorter Catechism; and every Sabbath evening, a part of the religious exercises was to answer the questions. I do not think that so long as I remained at home, a Sabbath ever passed without having this attended to.”
   Mrs. GILLILAND, the wife of JOSEPH GILLILAND, died, July 18, 1830, and in 1840, Mr. GILLILAND died on his farm at Egg Hill, Centre county, in the seventy-first year of his age. They were the parents of eleven children – seven sons and four daughters; of whom four sons are living, and two of them are elders in the Presbyterian church.

-transcription by Kate Maynard, 2012