More on Ezra T. Gillilland of Pelham Manor, Inventor of the Telephone Switchboard and Friend of Thomas Edison

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When most think of the inventor of the telephone and the phonograph, most think of Thomas Alva Edison.  Pelhamites, however, think of Pelham Manor resident Ezra Torrence Gilliland who actually assisted Edison in the creation and improvement of both inventions.  Gilliland further invented, on his own, the original telephone switchboard, the magneto bell, and a host of other technologies that were mainstays of the American telephone system for nearly a century.  

Ezra Torrence Gilliland was a prolific 19th century inventor and one of the most creative people ever to live in Pelham.  He served as one of the earliest village trustees of the Village of Pelham Manor, beginning his service in 1893 only two years after the Village was formed.  He later became President (i.e., Mayor) of the Village of Pelham Manor and served in that capacity until shortly before his death on May 13, 1903.  He also served for a time as President of the old Manor Club before that club became a women's club.  In 1893 Gilliland's wife, Lillian M. Johnson Gilliland, joined the board of The Pelham Home for Children and served in that capacity for many years.

Ezra T. Gilliland in an Undated Photograph.

I have written before about famed Pelham Manor inventor Ezra T. Gilliland and his wife, Lillian Johnson Gilliland.  See: 

Tue., Aug. 04, 2015:  Ezra T. Gilliland, The Inventor of the Telephone Switchboard and Friend of Thomas Edison, Was a Pelham Manor Resident.  

Thu., Aug. 13, 2015:  Lillian Johnson Gilliland's Memories of Thomas Edison and 19th Century Life in Pelham Manor.

Ezra and Lillian Gilliland moved to Pelham Manor in 1891 or 1892.  The Gillilands built their Pelham Manor home on a corner lot where Secor Avenue (now Secor Lane) meets Wolfs Lane.  Some sources indicate Ezra Gilliland's laboratory was built on the adjacent lot with frontage on Secor Avenue.  Others indicate that his lab was on the second floor of the home.  Yet others indicate his laboratory was in the basement of the home.  Most likely, he did laboratory work at various places in and around the home during the twelve or so years he lived there in Pelham Manor.  

Detail from Map Published in 1899 Showing Location of Home and

Laboratory of Ezra T. Gilliland. "Secor Ave." Since Has Been Extended

Across and Beyond Wolfs Lane and Now is Known as "Secor Lane."

Source: Fairchild, John F., Atlas of the City of Mount Vernon and the Town

of Pelham, Plate 22 (Mount Vernon, NY: John F. Fairchild, 1899).  NOTE:

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Today's posting to the Historic Pelham Blog transcribes two obituaries published at the time of Ezra T. Gilliland's death.  They are significant because they provide additional details of his life during his time in Indianapolis before he and his wife moved to Pelham Manor.  

"EZRA T. GILLILAND."  Source:  E. T. GILLILAND DIED AT HIS NEW YORK

HOME -- A FAMOUS INVENTOR -- KNOWN IN INDIANAPOLIS --

ASSOCIATED WITH EDISON, Indianapolis News, May 13, 1903,

p. 11, cols. 3-4.  NOTE:  Click on Image to Enlgarge.

*          *          *          *          *

Below is the text of two obituaries that appeared after Ezra T. Gilliland's death.  Each is followed by a citation and link to its source.  

"Ezra T. Gilliland.

Ezra T. Gilliland, an inventor, to whom many of the improvements of the American Bell telephone are due, died Wednesday from Bright's disease at his home in Pelham Manor.  Mr. Gilliland was the inventor of the original bell switchboard, of the magneto bell and many other contrivances now in use by the company.  On the upper floors of his home he had a large laboratory, where he worked almost to the day of his death, solving problems of electricity.  He was an intimate friend of Thomas A. Edison, and they worked jointly on several inventions.  He was interested in the Gilliland Electrical Company, which has large factories in Adrian, Mich., and when he had perfected and patented his inventions he sent the models there to be duplicated for the market.  He kept seven expert electricians employed in the laboratory at his home.  He was for several years a director in the Bell Telephone Co.  He had served as trustee and president of Pelham Manor.

Mr. Gilliland was born in Cuba, N.Y., fifty-six years ago, and lived most of his life in New York.  He was a member of the Reform, Manhattan, Colonial, Pelham Manor, New York Athletic and Columbia Yacht Clubs.  He leaves a widow, who was Miss Lilian Johnson, of Indianapolis.  The funeral was held yesterday at his home.  The Rev. Harris E. Adriance, of New York, formerly pastor of the Pelham Manor Presbyterian Church, officiated.  The burial will be in Adrian, Mich., which is the home of Mr. Gilliland's mother and brother."

Source:  Ezra T. Gilliland, New Rochelle Pioneer, May 16, 1903, Vol. 45, No. 8, p. 8, col. 3.

"E. T. GILLILAND DIED AT HIS NEW YORK HOME
-----
A FAMOUS INVENTOR -- KNOWN IN INDIANAPOLIS.
-----
ASSOCIATED WITH EDISON
-----

Ezra Torrence Gilliland, age fifty-eight years, died at his home in Pelham Manor, West Chester county, New York, this morning.  He had been a sufferer from Bright's disease.  He began to fail four or five months ago and death was not unexpected.  He was born in New York State on June 17, 1845.  He was well-known in Indianapolis.

He opened the first telephone exchange in this city, and during his residence here he was married to Miss Lillian M. Johnson, the daughter of Captain Johnson, formerly of Madison.  At various times he has been interested in business ventures in Indianapolis, and socially he was well known.  The funeral arrangements have not yet been made.  He will probably be buried in New York or in Adrian, Mich.

Mr. Gilliland began life as a telegraph operator on the line of the Michigan Central or the Lake Shore railroad, and in his boyhood days became acquainted with Edison.  This developed into a friendship which lasted all through life.  They were associated in many business enterprises, and in the development of the telephone and phonograph he shared honors with Mr. Edison.

Inventor of Switchboard.

The fundamental principles of the switchboard, used by every telephone system throughout the world, is an invention of Mr. Gilliland, and the perfected transmitter is also the result of his work.

Mr. Gilliland organized and constructed the first telephone exchange in Indianapolis, which at that time was situated in the Vance Block -- at present the Indiana Trust Block.  That was in the '70s.  He owned that exchange and the Indiana rights of the telephone and he operated the Indianapolis exchange for a year or more and sold it to a syndicate for $20,000.  This syndicate, within twenty-four hours, turned it into the Central Union company for $1,000,000.

His reasons for disposing of the telephone exchange and his rights in Indiana was prompted by his love for mechanics.  With the money obtained by the sale of the property he started the Gilliland Electric Manufacturing Company.  The business prospered and outgrew the quarters and he bought the old factory of the Indianapolis Shoe Company, on Brookside avenue.  He carried on the business there for three years and moved his factory to Adrian, Mich.  The Adrian plant became one of the largest electrical manufacturing houses in the United States.  

For thirty years he manufactured equipment for the Western Union and he made practically all of the insulating pins that carry Western Union lines over the country.

One of his latest inventions was a cigarette-making machine which has a capacity of 500 cigarettes a minute.  This machine was made with a view of entering into competition with other cigarette manufacturing machinery controlled by the French government.  It has been adopted by the Havana Commercial Company, which has monopolized the business in Cuba.

Mr. Gilliland left a considerable fortune.  At times he has been worth over a million dollars.  He was affable, kindly and hospitable.  

Mrs. Danforth Brown, of Indianapolis, is a sister of Mrs. Gilliland, and has gone to the funeral."

Source:  E. T. GILLILAND DIED AT HIS NEW YORK HOME -- A FAMOUS INVENTOR -- KNOWN IN INDIANAPOLIS -- ASSOCIATED WITH EDISON, Indianapolis News, May 13, 1903, p. 11, cols. 3-4.  

Archive of the Historic Pelham Web Site.

Home Page of the Historic Pelham Blog.

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Lillian Johnson Gilliland's Memories of Thomas Edison and 19th Century Life in Pelham Manor

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Lillian M. Johnson Gilliland was the wife of famed inventor Ezra Torrence Gilliland.  She lived in Pelham for nearly fifty years.  She and her husband arrived in about 1891 or 1892 and built a house and an adjacent laboratory building near the intersection of Wolfs Lane and Secor Avenue (now known as Secor Lane).  I have written about Lillian Gilliland and her husband, Ezra Gilliland, before.  See, e.g.:

Tue., Aug. 4, 2015:  Ezra T. Gilliland, The Inventor of the Telephone Switchboard and Friend of Thomas Edison, Was a Pelham Manor Resident.

Fri., Feb. 13, 2015:  A Magical Valentine's Day in Pelham Manor in 1895.

Although Ezra Gilliland died on May 13, 1903, Lillian Gilliland remained in Pelham for nearly the next four decades.  In 1938 she gave a lengthy interview to a reporter from The Pelham Sun.  She provided her recollections of her husband's extensive involvement with Thomas Edison in the 1870s and 1880s.  She also recalled her and her husband's early days in Pelham Manor, shortly after the Village of Pelham Manor was created in 1891.  The resultant article provides a quaint snapshot of a simpler llife in Peham Manor more than 120 years ago.  The text of the article is transcribed below, followed by a citation to its source. 

Mrs. Ezra T. Gilliland in 1938.

Source:  Good Times Began At Home and

Stayed There In The Old Days In The Manor –

Mrs. Ezra T. Gilliland Who Will Celebrate

80th Birthday in December Recalls Neighborhood

Character of Social Life in Pelham Manor in

the Early Days of the Village, The Pelham Sun,

Sep. 9, 1938, p. 3, cols. 1-5.

NOTE:  Click Image to Enlarge.

“Good Times Began At Home and Stayed There In The Old Days In The Manor

-----

Mrs. Ezra T. Gilliland Who Will Celebrate 80^th Birthday in December Recalls Neighborhood Character of Social Life in Pelham Manor in the Early Days of the Village.

-----

‘We were just like one big family then,’ Mrs. Ezra T. Gilliland long-time resident of Pelham Manor told a Pelham Sun reporter when questioned at her home on Boston Post Road, about life in the old days of the village. 

Speaking of the old days on Secor Hill, Mrs. Gilliland who will celebrate her 80^th birthday on next December 13^th, recalls with relish and a slight nostalgic sorrow the joys of other days; days filled to overflowing with gaiety and movement, joys in which many neighbors shared, both summer and winter, joys in which the home was often both the beginning and the end.

Mrs. Gilliland, who is small and dainty, with the quick neat grace of a bird, has weathered many changes in Pelham Manor since the days very early in the 90’s when she and her husband came from New York to make their home here.  Her husband, who died in 1903 was widely known as a successful inventor.  He was at one time associated with the American Bell Telephone Company and with the late Thomas Alvah Edison.  Much of the apparatus designed by the late Mr. Gilliland is now in the Smithsonian Institute.  He served as president of the Village of Pelham Manor and was an active and leading figure in the early days of the community.  He was also president of the old Manor Club.

‘We hunted around in Connecticut and had almost decided on Davenport Neck in New Rochelle when we finally determined to come to Pelham Manor,’ Mrs. Gilliland recalled.  The branch line of the New Haven railroad then active made commuting  a simple enough proposition.  About 1892 she and her husband built a home on Wolf’s Lane, the house now occupied by the Ely family.  Mr Gilliland soon built a laboratory for his experimental work right next door.

Mrs. Gilliland recalls the none too frequent houses that then stood in this section of the Manor known as Secor Hill, among them the old Secor house, now the residence of Mrs. Julius Manger and also the home of Mr. James Secor on Boston Post Road at Ely avenue.  The playwright, Joseph Arthur, author of ‘Blue Jeans,’ came to the Manor to live through friendship with the Gillilands.  The Geise family then resided in what is now the residence of Mrs. John Clyde Oswald. 

The reporter walking up the Boston Post Road to Mrs. Gilliland’s residence speculated on the changes that have taken place along the historic highway.  The sweet smell of newly cut grass spoke of the country but was rudely obliterated the second after by the nauseating fumes from the exhaust of a passing truck.  The highways tell the story, thought the reporter. 

Mrs. Danforth Brown who for 17 years served as manager of the Manor Club starting at the time when it became a women’s club in 1914, makes her home with Mrs. Gilliland her sister in Pelham Manor.  She told with humorous appreciation of a day long ago when she remembers Mr. Gilliland calling to his wife ‘Come to the window, here comes an automobile.’  An automobile, if you please, and on the Boston Post Road of all places!  On another occasion, both Mrs. Gilliland and Mrs. Brown recall Mr. Gilliland rushing out of the house, armed with whiskey to help resuscitate a wretched horse that had been overcome as he toiled up the hill on the Post Road on a terrifically hot summer day.

Speaking of the Boston Post road and traffic, Mrs. Gilliland related with glee that when there was some talk of extending the New Rochelle Trolley up the Post Road to connect with the New York line, the old residents on Secor Hill strenuously objected on the grounds of too much noise.

The Gilliland family were long friends of the late Thomas A. Edison and in fact, it was at their summer home in Winthrop, Mass., that Mr. Edison met Mina Miller who was to become the second Mrs. Edison.  A pleasant interlude came into their life when they spent about a year abroad while Mr. Gilliland was busy installing a factory in Antwerp.  Mrs. Gilliland had an interesting experience at that time while traveling in Italy when she went to use a telephone and saw staring her in the face the words ‘Gilliland Patent.’  The old-fashioned bell for ringing the operator was devised by Mr. Gilliland.

Way back in 1885 when Mrs. Brown, then a Miss Johnson and a student at the Conservatory of Music in Boston, recalls demonstrating the first wax records made for the old-fashioned phonographs at the Boston Exposition.  Mrs. Brown to the great interest of many visitors at the Exposition, sang a song and a record was made so that her voice could be heard again through the medium of the talking machine.  She recalls the crowds but fails to remember the title of the sond.  Mr. Gilliland collaborated with Mr. Edison on the phonography invention.

Returning to memories of old Pelham Manor, Mrs. Gilliland volunteered casually the startling information ‘We used to play golf here on the corner, at the intersection of Highland avenue and Boston Post Road, on a small neighborhood course.’  She recalled too annual summer clambakes she and her husband used to have on their lawn, with preparations for days beforehand and the chef from the New York Athletic Club presiding. 

‘There was no depression then, no President Roosevelt,’ Mrs. Brown interpolated with a sigh for the good old days.

‘We made our own pleasures at home,’ Mrs. Gilliland said.  Young people, she added, know nothing of those ‘primitive days.’  There were no movies, no ubiquitous automobiles.  People were dependent on themselves and on their neighbors to make their own good times.

Mrs. Gilliland remembers bicycle parties of about eight persons who would pedal along Split Rock Road down to the Clairmont Inn on Riverside Drive where dinner had already been ordered.  After dining the party would bicycle over to the Grand Central Station and stow their bikes in the baggage car, returning home by the ‘main line.’

The Winter with its snows and ice brought gay sleighing parties, merry with bells on the frosty air.  After gay rides the parties would often wind up at the New York Athletic Club.  Mr. Gilliland would have the tennis court flooded for skating, providing fun for the entire neighborhood. 

Music too, played an important part in the social life of those more leisurely days of the 90’s and early 1900’s.  Both Mr. and Mrs. Gilliland were actively fond of music and it was as their guest that the Italian tenor, Campanini came to Pelham Manor and sang at the old Manor Club, his last appearance in this country.  The noted tenor was accustomed to drink a pint of champagne before giving a performance.  The iron-clad rules of the old Manor Club were lifted on this occasion in order that the tenor might quaff his wine before lifting his voice in song.

With particular enthusiasm and an obviously sincere admiration for her many fine quantities, Mrs. Gilliland speaks of the late Mrs. Joan E. Secor, a brilliant, gracious and leading figure in the old days of Pelham Manor.  A leader of the Tuesday Afternoon Club, Mrs. Secor was to carry on her cultural activities in the Manor Club when it became a Woman’s Club. 

Mrs. Brown recalls the old Toonerville Trolley with affectionate memory.  She lived on Pelhamdale Avenue for some time and remembers one particularly stormy Winter night when the car was stalled in front of her home.  She supplied the motorman with hot coffee and food during the long night hours when he refused to leave the car, hoping that help might come at any moment to dig him out of the drifts.

Mrs. Gilliland moves along with the times, keeping her club interests formed so many years ago.  She is an honorary member of the Manor Club now and was the first chairman of the club house committee.  Mrs. Gilliland was honored last Spring for long association with the Pelham Home, having served as a board member since the founding of the cardiac institution on Split Rock Road.”

Source:  Good Times Began At Home and Stayed There In The Old Days In The Manor – Mrs. Ezra T. Gilliland Who Will Celebrate 80th Birthday in December Recalls Neighborhood Character of Social Life in Pelham Manor in the Early Days of the Village, The Pelham Sun, Sep. 9, 1938, p. 3, cols. 1-5.

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