Bruce Gillespie

    Bruce Gillespie was born  February 26, 1831, in Dearborn County, Indiana. He is the son of Robert and Margaret (Robertson) Gillespie, natives of Scotland. Robert Gillespie was born in Leith, educated in Edinburg, at the School of Medicine. He was a classmate of Dr. Wm. Davidson, who practiced medicine for many years in the city of Madison. Margaret Gillespie was born  at the Frith of Forth. They were married in Scotland, and came to the United States in 1819, and settled in Dearborn County, now Ohio County, Indiana. They raised nine children. Dr. Gillespie bought a half-section of land, and made a home for his family on the Frontier. He was the pioneer Doctor of that country, and lived to see the wild woods of his early home converted into peaceful homes, and towns and villages of Christian people taking the place of wandering tribes of savages. he died in 1846.

    The subject of our sketch was raised on a farm, and educated in the common schools. He worked at machinery and gun-making in his younger days, and still does that kind of work along with farming. In 1857 he was married to Miss Laura A. Gould, whose father, Samuel Gould, was a native of Pennsylvania, born in 1797. In 1805 he moved to the State of New York, and settled near Seneca Lake, where he learned the trade of tanner. In 1818 he emigrated to the White Water Valley in Indiana; there he married Nancy Wiley, in 1822. In 1836 he removed to Ohio County, Indiana. In 1869 he removed to Osgood, Ripley County, Indiana, where he remained the rest of his life. He died in 1882. In 1815 he worked at the same shop with General W. H. Harrison.

    Bruce and Laura Gillespie are the parents of six children: William R., who graduated at the Ohio Medical College in 1887, and is now practicing in Rising Sun, Ohio County -he married Miss Bina Shiverly, of Deerfield, Missouri; Nellie, married to Dr. Firth, of Madison, Indiana, and now practicing at Deerfield, Missouri; Mary C., married to John Land, living in Deerfield, Missouri; John B., who lived in Washington Territory; Stephen B. and George W., who are both at home.

    Bruce Gillespie owns a fine farm of one hundred and thirty-five acres of well improved land.

Source: Biographical and Historical Souvenir for the counties of Clark, Crawford, Harrison, Floyd, Jefferson, Jennings, Scott and Washington, Indiana. By John M. Gresham & Co., 1889.