My Genealogy Hound

Pleasant T. Gillean, farmer, Galena, Ark. Among the influential and respected citizens of Howard County there is no one more justly entitled to representation in this work than Pleasant T. Gillean. He was born in Alabama September 17, 1847, and is the son of John and Sarah (Dyer) Gillean, natives of Tennessee. The parents were married in their native State, and moved to Alabama in 1846. Two years later they moved to Georgia. Both were members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and were active workers in the same. The father died in 1884, at the age of seventy years, but the mother is still living and is seventy-six years of age. The maternal grandmother of our subject is also living, in Milan County, Tex., and is one hundred and two years old. Of the eleven children born to the parents, the following are living: John H. (resides in Polk County, Ark.), Hiram A. (resides in Dyer County, Tenn.), William E. (resides in Ellis County, Tex.) and Martha A. (wife of T. J. Shelton, a farmer of Texas). Pleasant T. Gillean was reared and educated in Walker County, Ga., and as he early had instilled into his youthful mind all the duties of farm life, when obliged to start out in life for himself, he chose agricultural pursuits as his calling. This he has continued to follow up to the present time. He went from Georgia to Hardeman County, Tenn., in 1869, and was married January 23, 1870, to Miss Margaret A. Thornton, a native of Tennessee. Her father, Alexander H. Thornton, is an old and very highly respected citizen of Hardeman County, Tenn. Mr. Gillean moved to Arkansas in 1874, settling in Howard County, and is now the owner of 160 acres of land with about thirty acres under cultivation. To the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Gillean were born nine children, six of whom are living: John A., Ellen E., Rhoda M., Amos C, Henry C. and Minnie A., all living with parents. Mr. and Mrs. Gillean are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and Mr. Gillean is Democratic in his political tendencies. He was elected justice of the peace in 1882, and has discharged the duties incumbent upon this office for four years. He had seven brothers in the late war.