Happy birthday Uncle Jasper Gibbs (Dr.)

I just got a reminder from Google calendar where I've tried to start posting all my ancestor's birthdays, that this is Dr. Jasper Gibbs' birthday, 1810.

I've mentioned him before probably, since he's the only relative I know who had a town named after him,  Gibbsland, LA.  Though having so many other folks named Gibbs might have contributed to it.

The style of Plantation houses (not the Gibbs residence)

He and his family moved to Bienville Parish in the mid-1840's, along with my Rogers ancestors.  His sister Lucinda Benson Gibbs married George Washington Rogers, my grandfather Rogers' grandfather. The Gibbs siblings' parents were Hiram and Sabra Wilbourn Gibbs.

He was one of 8 Gibbs adult children who migrated going west from the Spartanburg area of South Carolina (it was just Union District at that time). Some of the Rogers and Gibbs kept going into Texas, settling in Huntsville and Mexia.

According to several sources, Dr. Jasper Gibbs had many more siblings than I have records for, but I'm always willing to learn of new cousins.  And he was married twice, and had around 9 children.  I haven't had a chance to check out the dates on ancestry.com, which sometimes get siblings and children confused.  


I did enjoy the actual copy of the Census record of 1850 which lists his first wife Laura (Drake) as 29 to his 40 years of age.  There are two Drakes living with them, initials given only of W.S. a female who is 58 years old, and S. another female who is 52 so probably of her parents' generation.  There may also be a brother of Laura's named William A. Drake, age 21 who is listed as a student, (who might have been studying medicine under Dr. Gibbs since they were living away from any colleges the at the time.)  

The three Gibbs children who had been born before 1850 are listed as Henry N. age 10, a male; L. F. age 6, a female; and W. J. age 3, a male.  Since ancestry.com gives some interesting names that Dr. Gibbs children had, I wanted to be sure to give you the gender of these children.  On various trees it is said he had children named Hugh female, and Jasper female.  I haven't had time to chase these people down to see if it was a typo or not.

His land and property on the 1850 census is valued as $22,000. On the slave listing of 1850 (a separate document apparently) he has 17 slaves.  This would have meant he probably did plantation type farming on his property, raising cotton most likely.

I remember hearing my Rogers grandmother telling me Dr. Gibbs second wife was the heiress of the Coca-Cola legacy as being one of the Candler family of Georgia.  He married her in 1857.  His first wife died in 1860 according to the tree records I've seen.

He died in 1877 in Mexia Texas, which is between Houston and Dallas, in case you wondered.  There were many Rogers and Gibbs living there, so he probably moved to be with family at some time.  There were many of his children who lived into the 20th century.