John Gilmore and his wife Susannah Odell Gilmore journeyed westward to Kansas Territory from Indiana in 1857. They traveled by boat to St. Louis, by train to Leavenworth and by overland stage to Lawrence.

For three years, Mr. Gilmore was associated with Lyman Allen in the hardware business in a building at Seventh and Massachusetts. However, the fertile farm land along the Kansas River beckoned. Blue stem grass grew wild. High enough to cover the head of a man on horseback. Everything that was planted grew luxuriantly.

In 1860, they bought a farm six miles east of Lawrence from the Shawnee Indians, Bluejacket and his wife, Silverhead. The two hundred acres cost them $2 per acre--part in gold, part in trade. They added another two hundred for $3 per acre in gold.

Making their first trip to this new home in an oxcart, they carried a lunch along for the full day's journey. Waiting for their home to be built, the Gilmores endured the first winter in a one-room board shanty with a dirt floor and a leaky roof. One day during a hard rain, a stranger rode to the door and asked for shelter. Mrs. Gilmore informed him that he was welcome if he thought it was any better inside the house than out. After glancing in, he shook his head, mounted his horse, and rode away in the storm.

Indians wandered into their home frequently, usually seeking supplies or selling berries. They were always treated courteously and trusted by the Gilmore, and they never violated that trust. Not only the Indians came to the door, but runaway Negroes from the southern states often stopped for something to eat.

The first wheat crop ever sown in the valley was on the Gilmore farm.

In 1861, John Gilmore helped to take a wagon train loaded with provisions to Denver. With him on the hazardous trip were two cousins, Thomas Martin Gilmore of Overbrook and William John Gilmore of Lawrence. Although they saw many Indians and the debris of prairie schooners that had been attacked, they were not bothered.

When Quantrill attacked Lawrence in 1863, Mr. Gilmore was too sick to accompany the group of men who rode to Lawrence to drive the band out. He did start to Lawrence later in the day and helped in the capture of Skaggs, one of Quantrill's men.

The Gilmores weathered a grasshopper plague and the flood of 1903 that washed away their crops and crept to within a few feet of their front door.