More Notes on William Gibson
100 years ago, Sarah Davidge Gibson researched her family genealogy. She was born October 4, 1844, and in 1901 she wrote her "Gibson" book. (Here is her book.) In her possession was an old family Bible, that was purchased by her great grandfather, John Gibson (1754-1828), and handed down from generation to generation. From the information in that Bible, and the knowledge of her parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, she compiled her family tree. Included in her family tree is a William Gibson, who died in Cumberland Co., PA in 1771. It is this William Gibson, that this text is about.
It is believed, that William Gibson was born before 1717 in Ireland, that he is of Scotch-Irish descent, and that his father or grandfather was a John Gibson, who was born in Scotland about 1663. When William Gibson wrote his Will in December, 1770, he had 10 children, and his wife, Margaret, was pregnant with their 11th child.
When Sarah D. Gibson wrote her book on Gibson's, she did not know much about William Gibson. She knew about when and where he had lived, who he had married, the names of his children, and about when he died. She knew nothing about any of his descendants, and did not have William's Gibson's Will.
In the preface of Sarah's book, she says that she had assigned birth dates to William's children, "...and in the absence of accurate dates of birth (she) cannot definitely fix where they belong. The dates given in the foregoing are approximate, hardly two years out of the way." In doing this, Sarah had erroneously given a birth date of 1761 to the unborn child, who was really born in 1771! Sarah had assumed that the first son, Robert, must have been born about 1741, and then assigned birth dates every two years for the next 10 children.
Many, many years after Sarah D. Gibson wrote her book, another researcher, Dee W. Schvaneveldt, read Sarah's information. Sarah's book can be found in the L.D.S. History Library. Dee, believing the information from the book was true, entered it into her own ancestral file, and submitted it to the L.D.S. Library. Recently I spoke with Dee W. Schvaneveldt, and she admitted that she obtained some of her information from Sarah's book. Dee did not know that the dates of births for William's children were wrong; she did not know that William Gibson had died in 1771, not in 1761; and she did not know about William Gibson's Will. She said, that she will be going back to the L.D.S. History Library in Utah and correct her errors.
Now what had happened, that after Dee W. Schvaneveldt submitted her original information, other researchers, who had a William Gibson in their ancestral trees, came across her information found in the L.D.S. History Library. They believed that the information that they had found was true, with those erroneous dates, and they fitted William Gibson into their family trees. They were not aware, that Dee W. Schvaneveldt obtained her information from Sarah Gibson's book; they were not aware, that the dates for William Gibson's children were wrong; they also were not aware of William Gibson's Will. By including this William Gibson in their family trees, they have given him a completely different ancestry, with different parents, and a line back to London, England. This has become a compounding of errors, and hopefully, it all can be corrected.
Soon, I will be reading Sarah Davidge Gibson's book, and I will print out, the genealogy found in it. However, it will be slightly edited by using the information found in William Gibson's Will.
Next, I will be adding my thoughts that Col. John Gibson is not the son of William Gibson (d.1771). For how could Col. George Gibson, be a Colonel, before the Revolutionary War, and do all the things that he did, when he was still a minor (under abt 18) in 1770!