William Joseph Gill, Franklin Parish, Louisiana

Submitted by Mike Miller Sept. 2001







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William Joseph Gill is both a practical business man and 

educator, and is eminently well qualified for his duties at 

one of the important institutions of the state, the Louisiana

Training Institute at Monroe.  This is Louisiana's school 

farm for delinquent boys, where approximately 300 boys between 

the ages of eight and seventeen are given the discipline of

wholesome environment, work, schooling and social training to 

fit them for lives of usefulness.

The institution has an equipment of some seven or eight 

buildings, about 800 acres of land, and there are ample 

opportunities for dairying and stock raising and other phases of 

agricultural production, while in addition the boys have opportunities 

of grade school instruction and also practice in the mechanic arts to 

make those inclined that way proficient in the different building and other 

mechanical trades.  The honor system has been maintained.  

Mr. Gill took the superintendency of the institute, and the results have been 

admirable.  Recreational features of the institute are a brass band, a baseball 

team, the publication of a monthly newspaper and occasional outings.



W. J. Gill was born in Scott County, Mississippi, in 1884, son of C. H. and 

Mittie E. (Lee) Gill.  Three years after his birth his parents removed to 

Franklin Parish, Louisiana.



He was reared on a farm not far from the Town of Gilbert, attending common 

schools in that parish.  Most of the responsibilities of the farm devolved upon his 

young shoulders when he was about fourteen years old.  Subsequently he attended 

the Polytechnic Institute at Ruston and a commercial college at Mena, Arkansas.  

Mr. Gill in 1907 engaged in business at Gilbert, and subsequently for several years was 

a traveling salesman for the W. B. Reilly Company of New Orleans, one of the oldest and 

largest coffee importing houses in the country.



It was in 1917 that he came to the Louisiana Training Institute at Monroe as assistant to the 

superintendent, and in 1918 was appointed by the governor to the full responsibilities of 

superintendent.  Associated with him in the responsibilities and the interest in the boys 

entrusted to their charge is Mrs. Gill.  Mr. Gill married Miss Maurine Ella Smith, whose 

father was a Baptist minister.  They are both members of that church.  Their two children 

are Charles Edgar and Stella Jo.  Mrs. Gill was educated at Blue Mountain College, at 

Blue Mountain, Mississippi, and for a number of years was a teacher in the public 

schools of Louisiana.



NOTE:  The sketch is accompanied by a black and white photograph/drawing of the subject.



A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), pp. 299-300, 

by Henry E. Chambers.  Published by The American

Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.