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Note: Henry Gill immigrated to the USA in 1851. I believe he may have come with a group of immigrants from Ireland and England that settled in La Crosse County, Wisconsin in 1851. He was in England in March of 1851 because he appears in the Census of England done in that year. He was listed as a pauper and lived with his parents. Evidently economic times were very difficult for agricultural workers in Huntingdonshire at that time. An article about emigrants from England mentioned the lack of food especially meat in the diet of the workers and how much better life was for those who immigrated to the US, Australia or Canada. Many immigrants were attracted to Wisconsin by a book, published in 1850, called "Wisconsin Heritage".
In the 1860 Federal Census, Henry and Elizabeth are listed as living in Richmond, Walworth County, Wisconsin.
Henry served in the Civil war from 1862 until 1865 when he was given an early out because of his wife's illness. His first wife, mother of his two sons, died in 1865 and he married Sarah (Duck) Doer in 1866. They had two daughters.
Henry became a naturalized citizen of the United States of America on October 11, 1870. His witnesses were David Wade and another male Wade who were his first wife's in-laws. He proved a claim of 160 acres in Trempealeau County in 1872 in Lincoln Twp. The claim was probably between Whitehall and Galesville.
Henry's first wife, Elizabeth, and his son, Ernest, who died in 1874; are buried in Whitehall.
In 1880, Henry, Sarah, Willard, Rose and Daisy moved to Boone County Nebraska and in 1886 Henry and his daughters moved to the Redding, California area. Henry and his second family livid in Shasta County, California where Sarah had a homestead in Buckeye. Henry tried raising fruit trees but the soil was not good and the trees didnot prosper. Sarah died in 1890 and his daughters had married. Henry tried to live with his oldest daughter but felt it was to noisy for him. He went back to Nebraska to his only son and died there in 1903.
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