From The St. Louis Republic
St. Louis, Missouri
November 13, 1905

WIDOW FINDS SHE 
IS ONE OF SEVEN
____________

Mrs. Mary J. Gilliland, Relict of 
Oft-Wedded Soldier, Tries
to Get Pension
____________

SECOND WIFE IN THE WAY
____________

Applicant, Who Is Related to
Roosevelt, Unable to Learn
Whether Her Predecessor
Is Dead or Alive.
____________

   The matrimonial career of the late Francis Marion Gilliland, First Lieutenant in the Fifteenth Kentucky Cavalry, is causing an endless chain of trouble to his widow, Mrs. Mary Jane Gilliland, of No. 3162 School street, who is related to President Roosevelt.
   Mrs. Gilliland is trying to make good her claim to a pension, based on her late husband’s services during the War of the Rebellion.
   The present Mrs. Gilliland is Mrs. Gilliland No. 3.  Mrs. Gilliland the first was divorced in 1868; Mrs. Gilliland the second died, or is supposed to have died, in 1875; a supposed Mrs. Gilliland No. 4 was living recently in Pierce City, Mo.; a Mrs. Gilliland No. 5 may exist in Florida, while No. 6 and No. 7 may also have existed.
   Mrs. Mary J. Gilliland’s trouble is about wife No. 2 She cannot discover whether the woman is dead or living, and on this hinges her ability to prove her right to draw a pension of $17 a month.
   Gilliland served with distinction through the war until he was wounded in a battle in Tennessee and taken prisoner. He languished in Libby Prison for eleven months, and never fully regained his health after that ordeal.
   He was married shortly after the war, but soon divorced. A few years later at Cape Girardeau, Mo., he met and married Mrs. Maude S. Walker. She is supposed to have died in Cincinnati, O., in April or May, 1878. If the fact of her death can be established satisfactorily, Mrs. Mary J. Gilliland can secure her pension; otherwise she will fail.
   After wife No. 2’s death, Gilliland met and married this Mrs. Gilliland, who was Miss Mary J. Redd, the daughter of one of the oldest and wealthiest families of Louisville, Ky. They lived happily together for five years, Gilliland making a good living as a teacher.
   Then he left his wife, and within a month married a Miss Virginia Graham of Pier City. He lived with her for five years, and then disappeared again, only to be heard from later in Florida with another Mrs. Gilliland. Other women’s names were mentioned in connection with him, until in 1892 he was an inmate of the Soldier’s Home in Leavenworth, Kas., and began to draw a pension.
   Lieutenant Gilliland died in 1901, and the Mrs. Gilliland, who had been Miss Virginia Graham, applied for a pension, Senator Cockrell indorsing[sic] her application.
TWO WIDOWS APPLY.
   This application was on file and had not been approved when Mrs. Mary J. Gilliland put in her claim, to the complete discomfiture of the other, who promptly dropped hers.
   But because there may still be a previous Mrs. Gilliland living the claim of Mrs. Mary J. Gilliland cannot be approved and passed until she establishes the death of the Mrs. Gilliland who was Mrs. Maude S. Walker.
   To trace this Mrs. Walker, Mrs. Gilliland has advertised, and written many letters to business associates and friends of her husband, none of whom however, has been able to assist her. No one in Cape Girardieu can tell her of Mrs. Walker-Gilliland’s relatives or history, beyond a bare report that she died at her mother’s home in Cincinnati, and had been a Swedenborgian.
   Now that old age is confronting her, Mrs. Gilliland is anxious to establish her claim to the pension. She is not well off financially. The fortune left her by her father has gone -- dissipated by her husband. All she can do now is to conduct a little rooming-house.
   Mrs. Gilliland’s grandmother on her father’s side was a Bullock of Georgia, of the same stock as that of the mother of President Roosevelt, and there is a degree of kinship between them.

-- transcription  by Kate Maynard, 2010