1925 Biography - William J. Gill

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.

Contributed 2021 Nov 04 by Mike Miller, from A History of Louisiana, by Henry E. Chambers, published in 1925, volume 2, pages 299-300.