William Harrison Gill Education Fund

William Harrison Gill was an evangelist missionary who worked in what is now the Southwest United States in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. As was typical at that time, he experienced many hardships including tough weather conditions and encounters with wild animals as he traveled the sparsely populated regions of what are now Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona and Nevada.

During this time, he established some 50 Sunday schools among the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Alabama indigenous nations traveling 4,600 miles in one year’s time. He also started several public schools where reading and writing English were taught. He kept in frequent contact with many of the people he met along the way.

In 1889, during a trip through Clay County, Texas, he spent the night at a country home, as he had on many occasions. However this particular home was to become a frequent stopover in his travels through the region. There he met and eventually married Mary Addy Karr, the fourth daughter of the household.

Together, William and Mary Gill traveled and preached throughout Texas. When Mary’s health started to fail, Gill requested and was granted a transfer to Arizona, which was at the time still a territory.

As was to be expected, life was hard. Trips of six to seven weeks’ duration into the back country were long and tiring. Their standard form of travel was a horse and buggy. William carried all the necessary provisions, including horse feed, because the distance between settlements was great. He also carried a gun to provide both sustenance and protection from the mountain lions, coyotes, and bears which inhabited the wilderness.

On one trip into the desert, William’s horse broke loose in the middle of the night, leaving the missionary stranded 75 miles out. He walked the distance back to the nearest town and eventually bought a buckboard and two sturdy mountain ponies for future treks.

After many years of traveling, William decided to relocate and remain on the Salt River of Arizona with the Pima Tribe already located there. With permission from the Sunday School Union and the Pima reservation, he set up a house there with his wife Mary. Although their home was only a tent with a wooden floor, it was a welcome change from the hardships of a traveling life.

For several years, the couple worked with the Pima people to improve their living conditions. The first modern stove was brought to the reservation, and Mary introduced baked bread. She also brought sewing machines, which spurred an interest in dressmaking. In the spring of 1897, work began on the first church building. The Pima people provided adobe for the structure in exchange for their visitors’ contributions of wood and skilled labor. The Presbyterian Mission Board appropriated money for the completion of the project.

In the late 1890s, some Pima had converted to Christianity and sent the first missionary from their tribe to work among the Papago tribe in southern Arizona. Six months later, the Pima also sent representatives to work among a nearby group of Maricopa natives.

During their six years on the Pima reservation, Mary gave birth to a daughter, Ruth Louise. At about the same time, William visited Fort McDowell, an abandoned army fort being used by the Mojave Apache tribe. Like most native peoples, their land had been stolen from them. Having been stripped of their home and without their ancestral lands, their living conditions were very harsh.

In 1902, William decided to leave the Pima reservation with Mary and Ruth Louise and move to Fort McDowell. There, the couple was given 60 acres of land from the US government, which they shared with the native people. Following a long struggle, the Apache tribe was eventually deeded land in the rich Verde River Valley by the federal government.

The Gills were often harassed by local white settlers because of their work with the Mojave Apache tribe and they often feared for their lives. Eventually conditions improved, and in May of 1907, the first Apache church was dedicated.

Milk cows and calves were gradually brought to the reservation, and poultry was introduced. The Gills eventually moved to Nevada to work with another indigenous group, the Pah Ute people, on the Walker River Reservation. Shortly after moving there, William Gill was killed in an accident while driving a team of horses. He had spent 33 years doing missionary work among indigenous tribes of the Southwest.