David S. Gilmore has been connected with the publishing and editing of newspapers in Southern Kansas for a quarter of a century or more. For upwards of twenty years he had been proprietor and editor of the Northern Lyon County Journal at Allen, and is one of the leading citizens of that town.
He is a son of one of the very prominent pioneers and early builders of Emporia, the late D. S. Gilmore. D. S. Gilmore was born in County Dundee, Scotland, in 1841, a son of William Gilmore, who was a cabinet maker and who brought his family to America, living for a time in Rochester, New York, and in 1858 settling among the pioneers of Southern Kansas. D. S. Gilmore was also connected with the printing trade, and as a pressman helped move the first power printing press up the river to Leavenworth and thence to Topeka, this being the first press of the kind brought into Kansas. There were no railroads in the state at the time. For some time D. S. Gilmore was joint owner with Mr. Statler of the Emporia News. At the first call for troops he enlisted in a Kansas regiment of infantry and was a Union soldier until the close of the war, and his widow now receives a pension for his services. Following the war he was in the newspaper business at Emporia and later for twenty years was in the furniture and undertaking business. He was also associated with W. T. Soden in the manufacture of furniture, their factory being located on the river at Emporia.
D. S. Gilmore also took a prominent part in public affairs. He served as county clerk of Lyon County and as commissioner, also filled the office of mayor of Emporia, and was one of the leading republicans in this section of the state. He was a member of the Christian Church and of the Masonic order and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. He married Margaret L. Brown, who was born in Indiana in 1846 and still lives in Emporia. Their children were: Jean, wife of William White, a hardware salesman living at Seattle, Washington; Stella, wife of W. H. Brooks, who for the past thirty years had been a grocery merchant at Emporia; Anna, wife of R. H. Lewis, a merchant at Kansas City, Kansas; Helen, wife of Eugene W. McGain, an attorney at Pawhuska, Oklahoma; David S.; John, a salesman for W. H. Brooks Grocery Company at Emporia; and Margaret, wife of E. C. Ryan, secretary and treasurer of the Mutual Building and Loan Association of Emporia.
David S. Gilmore was born at Emporia, August 16, 1868, and gained his early education in the public schools, being graduated from the Emporia High School in 1888. He took up the printing trade, and for a time was on the Emporia Republican for C. V. Eskridge, and was then with the Emporia Gazette, when it was owned by J. R. Graham, and afterwards when W. Y. Morgan, now lieutenant governor of Kansas, was its proprietor.
In 1896 Mr. Gilmore entered journalism as an independent profession, establishing a paper called the Admire Journal at Admire, but two years later he removed the plant to Allen and changed the name to the Northern Lyon County Journal. This is one of the influential newspapers of Lyon County and had a circulation over a tier of six townships in the northern part of the county and also goes into many homes and other adjacent counties. The offices of the plant are on West Fifth Street. It is a weekly paper and is independent in politics.
Mr. Gilmore himself is a member of the socialist party. He attends the Methodist Church and belongs to the International Typographical Union. In 1892, at Emporia, he married Miss Minnie L. Thomas, daughter of Samuel and Margaret Thomas, both of whom are now deceased and who were of Welsh descent. Her father was a stone mason by trade. Mr. and Mrs. Gilmore have six children: Phyllis, wife of C. M. Certain, who is connected with the street railway company at Emporia; D. Sam, Jr., a printer for the Sanders-Cook Printing Company at Pittsburg, Kansas; Dorothy, a freshman in the State Normal School at Emporia; Holen, a freshman in the Allen High School; and Clarissa and William.
