Individual Details

The Kirkpatrick family described in this book formed an early and close association with the Gillham family of South Carolina. The Gillham family was established in this country by Thomas Gillham, who was born probably in Ulster, Ireland about 1700. He emigrated to America in the 1730's with his wife, Mary Meade, and at least one child. By 1738 Thomas and his family were well established in the New World, as is evidenced by the grant by the governor of Virginia to Thomas Gillham, of "1000 acres of land in Brunswick County, Virginia, on both sides of the Meherrin River, joined the land of Henry Briggs, 19 December 1738."

Tradition, which can not probably be substantiated at this late date, tells of a tragedy which struck the Gillham family at about this time. According to the tradition, Mary Meade Gillham was murdered by a Negro slave who had been admitted to the house by a maid servant. While the incident cannot be verified, it is a fact that Thomas Gillham sold all his slaves a few years later before moving to South Carolina, and that his sons held few, if any slaves when they made the long move to Illinois in the first few years of the nineteenth century. Moreover, Gillhams and their relatives (including the Kirkpatrick's) were quite active in efforts to prevent the spread of slavery to the Illinois country, both before and after Illinois was admitted as a state.

Sometime before 1743, Thomas moved his family to the Virginia frontier in Augusta County, where it is recorded that Thomas was made a "Captain of Foot" in the Augusta County Militia in that year. In 1744 he is recorded as an "original settler" of the Calfpasture area in Augusta County. About this time or a little later he married his second wife, Margaret Campbell, daughter of his neighbors in Calfpasture, William and Sarah (Gay) Campbell. Thomas' oldest daughter, Mary, married Alexander Campbell in 1744. Alexander was the brother of Margaret Campbell, Thomas' second wife, and it is said that he met her at his daughter's wedding.

In 1765 Thomas received a land grant near Bullock's Creek in what is now South Carolina, but was then considered to be in North Carolina. It is probable that it was about this time that the Gillhams moved to York County, and became neighbors of the Kirkpatrick's. Thomas had four children by his first wife, Charles, Ezekiel, Mary, and Nancy; and had seven more children by his second wife, Thomas, James C., William, John, Isaac, Sarah, and Susannah. Susannah, the youngest daughter of Thomas Gillham, married James Kirkpatrick, the son of the Kirkpatrick Immigrant. It was he who was assassinated in front of his wife by Tories during the Revolution. James and Susannah's son Francis also married a Gillham, Mary, daughter of Susannah's brother William Gillham. Isaac Gillham, another of Susannah's brothers, married Jane Kirkpatrick, daughter of James' brother Thomas Kirkpatrick. Jane Kirkpatrick's niece, Elizabeth (Eliza), daughter of her brother James, married in Bond County, Illinois, Thomas Cunningham Gillham. With the number of intermarriages between the two families, it is not surprising that many Kirkpatrick's bore the middle name of Gillham.

Many Gillhams and Gillham relatives moved to Illinois in the first years of the nineteenth century, the first arriving in 1797. Some accounts state that as many as 140 Gillhams and other relatives took part in the migration before it finally ended. The first Gillham to visit the Illinois country was James, the son of Immigrant Thomas. He had settled in Kentucky with his family and had developed a farm there. One day in 1794, while he was working in a field far from his cabin with his son Isaac, the cabin was visited by Kickapoo Indians who kidnapped James' wife and other children, carrying them back across the Ohio to the Indian's home territory. Some accounts state that they were kept prisoner for five years, but is more likely that it was only a few months. At any rate, while searching for his family, James visited the Illinois country and was highly impressed by it. After he recovered his family from the Indians, he moved to Illinois in 1797, and eventually settled in American Bottom, across the Mississippi from St. Louis.

James' letters to his brothers and other members of the family back in South Carolina, Georgia, and Kentucky, were instrumental in persuading so many of them to migrate to Illinois during the opening years of the nineteenth century. Among these immigrants were Thomas Newton, James Gillham, and John Kirkpatrick, brothers, and sons of Susannah (Gillham) Kirkpatrick, as well as Jane (Kirkpatrick) Gillham and her husband Isaac, and Janes' two brothers, James and John Kirkpatrick.

Most of the Gillhams and Kirkpatricks settled initially what is now Madison County, Illinois, in or near the American Bottom, rich bottom land along the Mississippi river, across and a little north of St. Louis. The Gillhams, Kirkpatricks, and others of this very large clan played an important role in the early history of the area and Illinois in general.

Birth	1710	Antrim, Ulster, Ireland
Marriage	1728	Ireland - Mary Meade
Marriage	1742	Margaret Peggy Gay Campbell
Marriage	Abt 1744	Calfpasture, Augusta Co., Virginia - Margaret Peggy Gay Campbell
Death	1790	Camden, York Co., South Carolina
Burial		Marker at Bullocks Creek Church, Bullocks Creek, York Co., South Carolina

Spouse	Mary Meade (1714 - 1738)
Child	Mary Gillham ( - )
Child	Nancy Gillham ( - )
Child	Charles Gillham ( - )
Child	Ezekiel Gillham ( - )

Spouse	Margaret Peggy Gay Campbell (1725 - 1785)
Child	Sarah Gillham (1743 - 1828)
Child	Susannah Gillham (1747 - 1831)
Child	Thomas Gillham (1749 - 1828)
Child	William Gillham (1750 - 1825)
Child	James Clemons Gillham (1753 - 1813)
Child	John Gillham (1756 - 1835)
Child	Isaac Gillham (1757 - 1845)