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D.
Leigh Henson introduces new works
focused on the Gilletts of Elkhart
 Send
a link to a friend
 [March
22, 2019]
In 2018 the sale of the Gillett Mansion
near Elkhart and in 2017 the sale of
vast tracks of Gillett heritage farmland
concluded a chapter in the near-epic
family history of John Dean Gillett--the
19th-century Cattle King of America.
That family history ties to three-term,
Illinois Governor Richard J. Oglesby and
his descendants. Oglesby married the
oldest daughter of John Dean and Lemira
Gillett. The Oglesbys’ older son, John
Dean Gillett Oglesby (twice elected
lieutenant governor of Illinois), later
managed thousands of acres of Gillett
heritage farmland.
Members of the Gillett-Oglesby families
have contributed significantly to the
economic, political, and cultural
history of central Illinois. Much has
been written about these families, but
the Gillett story especially needs to be
told more completely. Accordingly, I
have created a research-based,
collaborative webpage as a pictorial
history of the Gillett family from its
beginnings in the 1850s to the present.
After Mr. Gillett's death in 1888, his
family endured several scandals,
including the 1900 divorce of his only
son, whose mother then had him arrested
on a charge of insanity. In 1904 two of
John Dean Gillett's daughters went to
war over ownership of the family real
estate. The resulting civil trial split
the family into two factions and was one
of the most expensive in Illinois
judicial history.
William Maxwell, the native Lincolnite
and acclaimed author, had written about
the 1904 Gillett estate trial in
Ancestors: A Family History (1971).
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His grandfathers were attorneys on
opposing sides in the trial, but Maxwell
admitted he had limited knowledge of the
dispute: “What was being fought over
was, at a rough estimate of its
present-day value, five or six million
dollars. I still don't know anything
like the full details of this immensely
complicated story; the broad outlines I
got partly from a newspaper clipping in
my grandmother's scrapbook and partly
from a Lincoln lawyer, a man of my
father's generation. He was a schoolboy
when all of this happened and was
present at the trial” (p. 161).
My research rediscovered detailed
newspaper reports of the trial that
Maxwell had not seen, and I transcribe
them in my Gillett family history
webpage. I also provide information
about the ironic site of the trial in
Gillett Hall in Lincoln, the trial
lawyers, and judge as well as questions
unanswered by the trial. My webpage
presents extensive Gillett-Oglesby
family history before and after the
trial, including other scandals and how
the heirs have managed their heritage
farmland.
Visit the website: Finding Lincoln
Illinois
The Real Estate Empire of the John Dean
Gillett Family of Elkhart, Illinois;
the Gillett Great Estate Trial of 1904
at Lincoln, Illinois; and Gillett
History to the Present
[D. Leigh
Henson]
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