Notes from Wayne Gilleland:
Thomas Walker "T. W." Gilleland, born July 23, 1821 in Jackson County, Ohio, was a son of John Berrisford Gilleland and Sarah Johns(t)on.
After the death of John, his widow Sarah remarried to Samuel Gilliland of Jackson County, himself a widower after wife Sarah Krouskop died in 1848. Meanwhile, some of John and Sarah's children left Jackson County and moved west. Several ended up in Kansas and Missouri, while brothers T.W. and Allen Berrisford "A.B." Gilleland eventually migrated to Windom, Minnesota.
T.W. himself never married but prior to settling in Windom, A. B. Gilleland had married Indiana-born Mary (Molly) Frances Byers, who died in St. Louis in 1877. When A.B., who was at one time superintendent of the Keokuk Packet Co., passed away three years later he left the care of his and Mary's only child, Blanche, to his brother, T.W. It is debatable whether T.W. alone cared for Blanche until his death in 1889; she is known to have moved to Indiana to live with a sister of A.B.'s wife, Molly.
Thomas Walker Gilleland was a man who wore many hats, having a varied career as a steamboat captain, lumber and hardware dealer, and banker. The newspaper advertisement provided here reflects his time with the lumber company and is dated 1873.
T. W. Gilleland Lumber Company ad from a St.Paul newspaper, 1873: