Biography - Robert Gillespie
ROBERT E. GILLESPIE. The president of the Illinois State Trust Company,
of East St. Louis, has won precedence as one of the strong and influential
factors in connection with financial affairs in Southern Illinois, and his
advancement represents the concrete results of his own ability and well
directed efforts. He is one of the prominent business men and liberal and
progressive citizens of East St. Louis, where he has maintained his home
since 1907, and is a native of Illinois, with whose annals the family name
has been long and worthily linked.
Robert E. Gillespie was born in Johnson county, Illinois, on the 21st of
January, 1878, and is a son of James B. and Mary (Enloe) Gillespie. To the
public schools of his native county Robert E. Gillespie is indebted for his
early educational discipline, which included a course in the high school at
Vienna, the county seat. This training was effectively supplemented by his
attendance in Drury College, at Springfield, Missouri, and at the age of
nineteen years he was appointed deputy circuit court clerk of his native
county, a position of which he continued the incumbent for three years.
Thereafter he served one year as assistant cashier of the First National
Bank of Cobden, Union county, and at the expiration of the period noted he
was advanced to the position of cashier of the institution. He retained this
office until 1907, when he removed to East St. Louis and effected the
organization of the City National Bank, of which he became cashier. In the
following year this institution was merged into the Illinois State Trust
Company, of which Mr. Gillespie was elected vice-president. He became a
potent factor in defining the policies and directing the management of this
substantial and popular institution, and appreciation of his ability and
sterling character was emphatically shown by his election to the office of
president of the corporation in the spring of 1911. He proves a most
discriminating and progressive chief executive and to him must be attributed
much of the success which has attended the operations of the staunch banking
and trust company of whose administrative corps he is the head.
Liberal and public-spirited in his civic attitude, Mr. Gillespie shows a
vital and helpful interest in all that concerns the welfare of his home
city, and in politics he pays staunch allegiance to the Republican party. In
the Masonic fraternity he has attained to the thirty-second degree of the
Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite and is also identified with the Ancient
Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. He is past master of his
lodge of Free and Accepted Masons and is also a member of the local lodge of
the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
In the year 1901 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Gillespie to Miss Ida
Spann, of Vienna, Johnson county, where her father, William A. Spann, is a
representative lawyer and citizen. Mr. and Mrs. Gillespie have one child,
Martha, and Mrs. Gillespie is a popular figure in connection with the
representative social activities of her home city.
Extracted from 1912 A History of Southern Illinois, volume 2, pages 572-573.
