Vital Statistics: Births Marriages Deaths
Mrs D Gillespie, 1948 see Saskatchewan Archives
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Saskatchewan Dominion Land Grants W2 (East)
Dominion Land Grants Saskatchewan W3 (West)
This database relates exclusively to Letters Patent issued by the Land Patent Branch of the Department of the Interior. The records refer to the first grants of land issued in three Western Provinces of Canada. Townships are numbered from south to north starting at the USA border. They are numbered from 1 to 129 and 141. Ranges are numbered from east to west starting from each meridian and numbered 1 to 34, from east to west. These are the earliest Gillespie settlers to the Western Provinces, and if all three charts are placed side by side, one can more easily identify the location for all families.
Reading properties from West to East adding: Township, Range, Section, Part, Meridian
52/24 Donald Gillespie, Section 25, Part SW, W2
27/23 James Gillespie Carr, Section 10, Part NE, W2
18/23 David Adams Gillespie, Section 32, Part NE, W2
6/16 Herbert John Gillespie, Section 12, Part NE, W2
6/15 William Gillespie, Section 20, SW, W2
Ezra Emerson Gillespie, Section 18, Part SW, W2
23/14 George Gillespie, Section 2, Part SE, W2
20/12 William Gillespie, Section 14, Part SE, W2
10/11 Robert M Gillespie, Section 10, Part NW, W2
32/4 James Albert Gillespie. Section 28, SW, W2
Ezra Emerson Gillespie, Section 32, SW, W2
Louis Andrew Gillespie, Thomas Popplewelt. Section 32, SE, W2
John Alexander M D Gillespie, Section 32, NE, W2
John Gillespie, Section 32, NW, W2
3/3 Albert Gillespie, Section 16, Part NE, Meridian W2 close to Manitoba border
Biographies
Gray Gillespie, Federal Civil Servant, b Regina, SK Feb 13, 1925. Died Winnipeg, Manitoba July 18, 1992, age 67.
Gray Alexander Gillespie was a senior civil servant with the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce. Gillespie attended Central Collegiate in Regina, then served with the Royal Canadian Air Force from 1944 to 1946. After the war, he graduated from the University of British Columbia with a Bachelor of Commerce degree.
He worked directly with Trans-Canada Air Lines (later Air Canada) in Regina, then in 1950 joined the family business, Queen City Florists. Following the death of his father the next year, Gillespie took over the firm and operated it as Gillespie Floral until 1962.
He moved to Winnipeg in 1962 as Assistant Manager, and subsequently Regional Manager of the Western regional office of the federal government’s Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce. Gillespie was responsible for promoting Western Canadian products and services in export markets.
In 1977, Gillespie was named Canadian consul to live in five Caribbean and Central American countries, based first in Guatemala and later Puerto Rico. He next returned to Winnipeg as Director of Tourism for Industry, Trade and Commerce until his retirement in 1981.
Gillespie is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, nee Spence, children: Michael, Kathleen, David, Cheryl, Robert and Jennifer, and six grandchildren.
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Donald and Mary (McKaig) Gillespie as told by Isabelle (Gillespie) Hood (published in Pioneers and Progress) Submitted by John Muirhead.
“Donald Gillespie (1857-1937) s/o of James Gillespie (1819-1875), and Mary McKay were married in Perth County, Ontario in 1879 and came west to Portage La Prairie in 1881. In 1882 they took up homestead in the Allindale District, northeast of Sintaluta. They remained on the homestead until their deaths: Mary in 1831 and Donald in 1937. To them were born six sons.
James Gillespie was born in Ontario but later farmed at Kyle, Saskatchewan. He was married but had no children. He died in 1947.
Son Donald Gillespie died in 1918 following a lengthy illness.
A son Hugh Gillespie died in infancy.
William Gillespie also farmed at Kyle, Saskatchewan but later sold the farm and returned to the family farm. This he sold and retired to live in Regina, where he died in 1962.
Angus Gillespie was overseas in World War I. He received his commission as Lieutenant, and won a medal for distinguished bravery. He too farmed at Kyle, Saskatchewan, but later sold that farm and moved to Saskatoon and then later to Victoria, British Columbia. He worked as a commissionaire until retiring. He is married, has no children, and is still living in Victoria.
Neil Gillespie seen in family photo. He farmed with his parents and in ;1923 married Ada Keffer. They later lived in Regina and Brandon, Manitoba, before moving back to Wolseley to farm the Keffer land until they retired. Neil passed away in1963.
Ada continues to live in Wolseley. They had one daughter, Isabella, who married Robert Hood. He is retired from the Saskatchewan Telephones and lives in Regina. They have two children, Grant and his wife Cindy in Calgary. Donalda and her husband, Robert Kozlowski, with their son Trevor, live in Ottawa, Ontario.
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Catherine Gillespie Motherwell.
“Late in the summer of 1908 our lives changed once again. For three years my father had been a widower, watching over Tal and me when we lived in Regina, running Lanark Place by proxy and of course, directing the agricultural affairs of Saskatchewan. I doubt if he really had time to be lonely, but I’m sure he missed the caring attention and companionship of a wife.
So on August 26th, my father, W. R. Motherwell, married Catherine Jane Gillespie, the lady principal of the File Hills Indian Reserve Boarding School. She was a handsome, intelligent woman, interested in my father’s public career, and a most gracious hostess to all his personal and political friends. She managed the farm in his absence, relaying my father’s instructions to the hired men, which she would write on the blackboard in the summer kitchen. When the men had completed the task, they would mark an X beside the instruction for Catherine to see.
Catherine had been a missionary and teacher at File Hills for eleven years before she and my father married. She and her staff taught the children home-making and farming skills, and Catherine devoted many hours ministering. …” See Motherwell Homestead National Historic Park – Lanark Place
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Memories by Ken Gillespie
Swift Current, Saskatchewan, 1906-1909 staying at the Imperial Hotel, living at the “Hines Place’ a short distance north of Swift Current, the adults talking of holding up a trainload of coal which was passing through Swift Current during a fuel shortage in the winter of 1906-1907 (“the hard winter”)
Our baby sister’s illness and her death on January 9, 1909. The trip out to the homestead in the summer of 1908, when one of the horses died on the trail, and my father and Mr Grisham, who was riding out with us, took the dead mare’s place, and helped the remaining horse pull the democrat over the rest of the trail.
The prairie fire that summer and fishing in Saskatchewan Landing. The cable ferry and the sour ferryman, Alex Mackie. The final move from Swift Current to the homestead in the summer of 1909.
Some of our neighbours as I remember then in 1909 and the distance they lived from us at that time, we lived on a Hudson Bay quarter section that my Father had bought – the NW1/4-20-15 West of the 3rd meridian. My Mother’s uncle, Donald McLean lived half a mile north of us. Mr Grisham Senior and his son Tom were one to one-half miles north. …..(he goes on to list all the neighbours)….I remember the visit our Aunt Katie, mother’s sister, paid us the summer of 1909, and how she sunburned and the mosquitoes nearly ate her alive. One time, while she was with us, mother and father had to go into Swift Current, forty miles away, a three-day trip. An innocent coyote appeared nearly scaring Aunt Katie stiff.
The time father was hitching the two broncs to the Democrat, and they got away from him. Mother, who was in the rig, was thrown out and landed in the manure pile….
I remember my father putting in the crop in the spring of 1910. He had three year old ‘Turkey Track’ broncs, Ned, Charlie, Bill and an old cayuse named Pat. Also a black three year old colt named Maud who could sometimes kick the stars out of the sky. …..she became the mother of a fine line of Clyde horses that my father bred for the following twenty-five years…but one morning long before that in 1911, dad went out to round up the horses and Maud took a swing at him, hit him, and broke his leg. He had to ride about four miles home, yelled for mother, and dragged himself inside and onto the couch in the kitchen. A neighbour road for the doctor in Swift Current. Dr Kelly arrived about five o’clock that afternoon driving the first car to visit our district. Dad’s leg was set and I can still hear the old man’s howls.Doc took dad with him to stay in the hospital in Swift Current….”
Total records this page: 22
