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HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ILLINOIS.
cultivated portions of the American Bottom, a few miles below Alton, but, in 1872, removed to Alton, where he spent the remainder of his life. He became a member of the State Board of Agriculture in 1866, serving eight years as Superintendent and later as its President; was also a Trustee of Shurtleff College some twenty-five years, and for a time President of the Board. In 1870 he was elected to the lower, branch of the Twenty seventh General Assembly, and to the State Senate in 1882, serving a term of four years in the latter. On the night of March 17, 1890, he was assaulted by a burglar in his house, receiving a wound from a pistol-shot in consequence of which he died, April 6, following. The identity of his assailant was never discovered, and the crime consequently went unpunished.
GILMAN, a city in Iroquois County, at the intersection of the Illinois Central and the Toledo, Peoria & Western Railways, 81 miles south by west from Chicago and 208 miles northeast of St. Louis. It is in the heart of one of the richest corn districts of the State and has large stock-raising and fruit-growing interests. It has an opera house, a public library, an extensive nursery, brick and tile works, a linseed oil mill, two banks and two weekly newspapers. Artesian well water is obtained by boring from 90 to 200 feet. Population (1890), 1,112; (1900), 1,441.
GILMAN, Arthur, was born at Alton, Ill., June 22, 1837, the son of Winthrop S. Oilman, of the firm of Gilman & Godfrey, in whose warehouse the printing press of Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy was stored at the time of its destruction by a mob in 1837; was educated in St. Louis and New York, began business as a banker in 1857, but, in 1870, removed to Cambridge, Mass., and connected himself with "The Riverside Press." Mr. Gilman was one of the prime movers in what is known as "The Harvard Annex" in the interest of equal collegiate advantages for women, and has written much for the periodical press, besides publishing a number of volumes in the line of history and English literature.
GILMAN, CLINTON & SPRINGFIELD RAIL-ROAD. (See Illinois Central Railroad.)
GIRARD, a city in Macoupin County, on the Chicago & Alton Railroad, 25 miles south by west from Springfield and 13 miles north-northeast of Carlinville. Coal-mining is carried on extensively here. The ci