The marker is a gift to the Kansas City, Missouri Park Board from Byron C. Shutz. Mr. Shutz is the great-great-grandson of Marcus Gill and his wife, Mary Jane Gill, Kansas City pioneers who purchased 1,000 acres in the area upon their arrival from Kentucky in 1854.
The memorial points out, among other things, how one son of Marcus Gill, Turner A. Gill, served two terms as Kansas City Mayor in the 1870's. The property's most notorious claim to prominence is the brief residence in 1859 of the Civil War guerilla, William Clarke Quantrill.
Marcus Gill, formerly an officer in the Kentucky militia, grew concerned with the increasing violence on the Missouri-Kansas border that began in 1853. In 1859 Gill hired Quantrill, then a Kansas schoolteacher, to live on the farm--just a few blocks from today's State Line Road--during the winter to help guard the Gill family against the Kansas Jayhawkers, marauders who terrorized Jackson County homes along the border. That winter was a pivotal interlude that many historians still examine for clues that might explain Quantrill's transformation from schoolteacher to dreaded guerilla leader.
In April, 1861, upon the outbreak of the Civil War, Gill hired Quantrill to accompany Gill's family as it moved to Texas. Quantrill was not hired for the pleasure of his company. Marcus Gill wanted somebody who he knew was good with guns and was a good rider.
In the 1880's, Marcus Gill divided the farm up among his children. They included his daughter, Susan Bruton Gill McGee, and her husband, Allen Burr Harrison McGee, representing still another Kansas City poineer family. Until the late 1950's about 300 acres remained in the McGee family. The J.C. Nichols Co. then purchased the property. During its development, the company set aside land that today is known as Migliazzo Park, a 12-acre park named for Carl Migliazzo, a former president of the Kansas City Board of Parks and Recreation Commission, who died in 1981.
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