Kate’s Notes: According to the lmited information I have for Thomas Gilliland, father of Ellison Sligar’s wife Margaret, he was born in 1759 at Ballymurray, County Down, N. Ireland. I have not been able to find any similar records for Thomas’ wife Margaret Stogdal, though she too was said to be a native of Ireland.
  At this point, not having thoroughly investigated this Gilliland family, I am merely assuming that the Sarah Gilliland who married Conrad Burkhart in Monroe County on May 30, 1847, was a sister of Margaret Gilliland Sligar.

COUNTIES 

OF

MORGAN, MONROE AND BROWN,

INDIANA.
________

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL
________

CHARLES BLANCHARD, EDITOR.
________

CHICAGO:
F.A. BATTEY & CO., PUBLISHERS.
1894

**********

ADAMS TOWNSHIP.

   ELLISON SLIGAR, established cabinet-maker and undertaker, was born in Bullitt County, Ky., October 11, 1822, and is the youngest of ten children born to David and Margaret (Stafford) Sligar, both of whom were natives of Pennsylvania, and of German and Scotch descent, respectively. David Sligar was educated in his native State. In about 1797, he emigrated to Bullitt County, Ky., then an unbroken wilderness. Himself and wife, with several other families, came down the Ohio River in flat-boats from Pittsburgh, landing at the present site of Louisville, Ky., which then contained only a few log cabins. He proceeded immediately to Bullitt County, where he entered 263 acres of land, which he was obliged to pay for twice in consequence of a defective title. Here he improved a farm, upon which he resided until his death, which occurred Janury 4, 1832, in his  seventy-fifth year. Ellison Sligar, the subject of our sketch, received such an education as could be obtained at the primitive log schoolhouses of the Kentucky frontier. After his father’s death, he resided with his brother Thomas until he was seventeen years old. He then went to learn the carpenter’s and cabinet-maker’s trades, serving an apprenticeship of three years, and has followed one or both of these trades ever since. In 1843, he removed to Gosport, Owen County, Ind., where he resided two years; thence to Adams Township, Morgan County, Ind., and settled near the present site of Eminence, where he still resides. He erected the first two buildings in the village of Eminence. In 1851, he bought wild land and has since improved the farm where he now lives, and for the last twenty-five years has been engaged in agricultural pursuits in connection with his trade.He was for a time one of the Trustees of Adams Township under the old constitution. He was married March 25, 1844, to Margaret Gilliland, a native of Pennsylvania, and a daughter of Thomas and Margaret (Stogdal) Gilliland, natives of Ireland, who emigrated to the United States in 1793. They were lifelong members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The former died in 1825, in his sixty-sixth year, and the latter in 1869, in her one hundred and second year. To our subject and wife have been born one daughter, viz., Sarah J., now Mrs. James H. Rhea. Mr. and Mrs. Sligar are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He is also a member of Eminence Lodge, No, 440, A., F. & A. M., of which lodge he has been Chaplain for some ten years. In politics, he is a Democrat.

-- transcription by Kate Maynard, 2010