Kate’s Notes: The E. T. Gilliland mentioned this article is Ezra T. Gilliland, Thomas Edison’s one-time business partner. Ezra was just one member of a Gilliland family known for their inventing genius. Ezra’s father Robert Gilliland was born in NY and migrated to Adrian, Michigan and to Indianapolis, where he and several sons were involved in the manufacture of telegraphing equipment in both locations. Two biographies of Robert and the obituary for Ezra can be found in the collections of our GT library, and on the Gilliland Trails forum, the subject of discussion in “Ezra T. Gilliland -- Edison’s forgotten partner.”

From the Daily Evening Bulletin
Maysville, Kentucky
30 April 1887

Narrow Escape From Drowning.

   JACKSONVILLE, Fla., April 30. -- Dispatches from Batoe, Fla., state that while Thomas A. Edison and a party of eight friends were standing on a pier at Kissiminee Springs the pier collapsed and precipitated all the parties except Mr. Edison and Mrs. Gillilan, of Adrian, Mich., into the water, which was eight or ten feet deep. A number of residents who saw the accident rushed to the scene and saved those imperiled. Several of them were going down for the third time. Those in the water were: Charles Ward and wife, and E. T. Gilliland and wife, of New York; Miss Daisy Gaston, of Indianapolis, and Miss Louise Miller, of Akron, O. Mr. Edson and Mrs. Gilliland saved themselves by lucky leaps to terra firma from the cracking timbers.

-- transcription by Kate Maynard, 2010