Restoring the House that John W. Gift Built

Like many old-house owners, the Vesoulises were drawn into local history through their home. They have learned a lot about its builder, an honored citizen of Peoria. John Wilson Gift (1840–1927) built the house on a bluff with a view that stretched to his factory, the Globe Roller Mills; he was a pioneer in the flour-milling trade. He was also a Civil War captain captured at Shiloh and held as a prisoner of the Confederacy, an inspiring speaker, and a philanthropist (funding, for one, the Gift Home for Children in Peoria). As an opera lover, he often traveled to Chicago for musical productions. The famed singer Emma Abbott, known as the Pride of Peoria, performed many times in this house. Gift’s flour sacks were printed with her image and that appellation. Gift’s biography was written by his second wife, Mae Harvey Gift, whom he married when he was 77 and she 32; she converted him to the Bahá’í faith. In the book she describes her husband’s meeting with Abraham Lincoln after Gift escaped his war imprisonment and made his way to Washington, D.C. He recalled that Lincoln gave him $5 to buy new clothes, and that the President had a raucous laugh.

LEFT Quotations like this one lettered above the library entry add another Arts & Crafts note. ABOVE The homeowner and his son restored the existing dumbwaiter to working condition. TOP This panel depicting first owner J.W. Gift was made by Z. Vesoulis, using cut colored glass, antique glass jewels, and an abalone shell border fitted into an old window frame. The portrait was handpainted on glass and kiln fired at a local studio.