Kates notes: Although the forenames of these Gilliland men were not provided by the newspaper, I’m going to speculate they may have been connected in some fashion to the family of James F. Gilliland, who moved from Kansas to Kiowa County, Colorado not long after this news item was published. A biography of James F. Gilliland can be found in the Gilliland Trails library. There is a Gilliland presence in Kiowa County much earlier, however, with a “F. E. Gilliland, operator, C, K & N Depot” listed in the Kiowa County Directory of 1889, and a James A. Gilliland listed in the 1871 Gazetteer as the manager of the Christy Lumber Co. Interestingly, in A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans, the same volume from which a biography of James F. Gilliland was transcribed, there is also a biography of Robert Binford Christy. In that profile it is stated that Anna E. Christy, daughter of Robert and Mary Lambert Christy, is mentioned as the wife of James Gilliland, of Kiowa County, Colorado.
   Gillilands have a long history in Colorado; James F. Gilliland, a son of Henry Clay Gilliland, had a convoluted migration from Iowa to Kansas to Tennessee, then on to Nebraska, back to Kansas and finally, to Colorado. The Gillilands involved in the notorious “Lake County War” had moved to Colorado from Ohio just after the end of the Civil War.
   It is not my intention with this preface to confuse anyone with scatter shot notes of these Gilliland families; Gilliland history in Colorado is deserving of much more research and clarification than I have been able to allot at this time.

From the Haswell Herald
Haswell, Kiowa County, Co.
14 January, 1915

Local News Items

   T. A. and L. R. Gilliland, two brothers from Kansas, arrived this week with their car of goods and stock and have commenced their buildings on their recently filed homesteads near the Slocum farm south of  town.

-transcription by Kate Maynard, 2012