William Clement Gillihan ^{2 3 4 5 6 7}

   Cause of his death was broncho pneumonia due to influenza.⁸

  General Notes:

Clem's parents were William Gillihan and Arathusa Marurah Farrington, natives of Washington County, Kentucky. (He reported on a later census that his father was born in Kentucky and his mother in Illinois.) The family moved from Illinois to near Crawfordsville, Crittenden County, Arkansas, when he was 4. His father died in 1845 along the road to Arkansas. His mother moved the family back to Illinois in 1847 and then to Iowa, locating in Warren County, near Indianola, where she married Michael R. Richardson. The family moved to a farm in Monroe Township, Daviess County, Missoouri, in 1855.

He started working for wages at age 14 as a farm laborer. He attended the local schools until 1858 when he arranged to stay with Sampson Alley in Gallatin to go to school there. To support himself he took the contract of carrying the mail between Gallatin and Bethany. That resulted in his school week being reduced to 3 days. He kept up his mail route and schooling until the Civil War made both impossible.

He was sympathetic to the Union cause and enlisted on 2 Feb 1862. Clem's son in law and biographer, Rollin J. Britton (7 Dec 1864 to 28 Mar 1931), described in 1922 one of Clem's experiences during the civil war, at Mine Creek near Pleasanton, Kansas, on 24 Oct 1864: "It was just before the charge at Mine Creek that Jode Critten was shot from his horse. A ball passed through the back part of his head below the ears. Mr. Gillihan dismounted and tied his bandanna handkerchief around Critten's head in hopes of stanching the blood that was spurting out of both sides of the wound. He never expected to see his friend Critten again, as he mounted his horse and entered the charge, but some three years afterward Mr. Critten showed up at a celebration in Gallatin and kindly returned Mr. Gillihan's handkerchief that had saved his life."

After the war, Clem took up the study of law in the office of Judge Samuel A. Richardson at Gallatin, Daviess County, Missouri, and soon became a successful attorney, being admitted to the bar in 1866. In 1870, he joined forces with a young lawyer named Samuel Thompson Brosius, son of Dr. George Washington Brosius, under the firm name of Gillihan & Brosius. That name became a household word in Daviess County through a period of 32 years. When Mr. Brosius withdrew from the firm in 1902 and moved to Colorado, one of Clem's sons, Lewis Brosius Gillihan, entered into partnership with his father in the firm of Gillihan & Gillihan, which business continued until Clem's death. Clem served Daviess County as its county attorney from 1868 to 1872 and then as prosecuting attorney to 1874 and again from 1892-94.

  Additional Information:

• Military Service: Pvt then Commissary Sergeant, Union, Company A, 1st Regiment, Missouri State Militia Cavalry, Between 2 Feb 1862 and 11 Feb 1865. ⁵

• Death Certificate Image: here.

Clem married Mary Jane Brosius, daughter of Dr George Washington Brosius and Martha Lawrence Kreigh, on 21 Feb 1867 in Gallatin, Daviess County, Missouri.¹ (Mary Jane Brosius was born on 22 Dec 1848 in Maryland,¹¹ died on 30 Nov 1930 in Kansas City, Jackson County, Missouri ¹¹ and was buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Gallatin, Daviess County, Missouri ^{9 12}.). The cause of her death was carcinoma of pylorus.⁸