The half-life of Henry Gibson

I've been thinking lately about my family history research, and how I haven't written in this blog for two months. I hate taking long breaks like that, makes it feel like I'm not keeping up on my research, identifying my family's heritage, and sharing it in a lasting way. I have also been trying to think of ways to pass on what I know about my ancestors to my kids. Learning and knowing about my ancestors is great for me, but a bigger part of the reason I do this is to bring their rediscovered stories to future generations so they don't get lost again. So I decided to try something - I want to commit to posting more regularly, and do a synopsis or brief life story of some of my direct ancestors. Hopefully this will be a good way to see what gaps I have in my own knowledge, and at the same time work as a quick way to give my kids an idea of who their ancestors were in a more digestible, less "listen to dad drone on and on for hours" sort of way.

I chose to start this with my earliest known Gibson ancestor, Henry Gibson. As I went through the documents I've accumulated over the years, I realized a couple things. First, he died relatively young at the age of 56. That might have seemed old to me once, but now that I'm in my early 40s, it doesn't sound that old at all. Second, the smattering of documents I have only covers the second half of his life - I don't have any documents on him at all before the age of 28. Hence the title of this post refers to the half of Henry's life that I do have some knowledge of.

The earliest mention I have of Henry is in the birth record of his oldest known child, a son named William born in Gortnagullion, County Fermanagh, Ireland, in 1844. Interestingly, he was the same age my dad and I both were, 28, when our first children were born. He worked as a farmer, but as far as I've been able to tell he didn't know any land, though maybe he rented or had some other arrangement. Just over a year later, a second child was born. I haven't seen a copy of the baptism record, but the person transcribing it couldn't read the name, so I don't know if it was a son or daughter. The child seems not to have lived long, as Henry and his family immigrated to New Brunswick, Canada in 1846, and the 1851 Canada census only names Henry, his wife Ann, and their son William as being born in Ireland. All their other children were born in Canada. I've often wondered if that second child died in Ireland, and if Henry and Ann had to bid the grave of their child farewell when they left to escape the potato famine.

Henry and Ann had seven more children in Canada - Thomas, John (my ancestor), James, Ann Jane, Sarah, Martha, and George. He worked as a laborer in Canada, making bricks and doing other jobs to support his family. In 1851, his family shared a home with three other families, making 21 people crammed into a single house. I can't imagine accommodations were super spacious, but they survived. They moved around a few times, and eventually lived in a home near Marsh Bridge in Saint John, New Brunswick. Henry likely died there on 4 April 1872. A funeral was held from his home two days later on 6 April. A local paper said he was a native of Pettigo in County Donegal, Ireland, the county northwest of Fermanagh. I haven't been able to confirm that yet, and hope to one day find out exactly where Henry came from.

That's really about all I know of Henry. He had a hard life - losing a child, probably losing other relatives in Ireland in the famine, leaving his homeland, and raising a large family in a new land. I'm grateful he did though, as it gave me and my family a chance to live in a great and free land, whereas they may not have even survived had they stayed in Ireland.

Kathleen Rose Gibson - the girl who lived

Today I had the opportunity, with my wife's help, to show my kids how to use the FamilySearch app. They're both really into using wireless devices, so the chance to play on an iPad was too good for them to pass up. :) Plus my daughter has done some family history with me in the past, so she was excited to do a little more.

I had them going through the tasks for any Gibsons they could find, when my son found something interesting - apparently my second-great-granduncle, George Gibson, and his wife Catherine (McDonald) Gibson had had a second daughter I didn't know about! Her name was Anna Gibson, born on 7 February 1902, in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. I did some extra searching, and her birth record is the only thing I can find for her - she missed the 1901 census by a few months, and she wasn't in the 1911 census with her widowed mother and older two siblings. My guess is she probably passed away before 1911, though I don't know that for sure. She just disappears.

While entering Anna into my database, I realized I didn't have much info on her older sister Catherine. I knew she was listed as Kathleen in 1911, but I had nothing on her after that. That was odd, because I had death info for George and Catherine (McDonald) Gibson, as well as their son George Henry Gibson. George Sr. died of pneumonia just a few months after Anna's birth. George Jr. died of tuberculosis in 1918 at the age of 23. Catherine (McDonald) Gibson died in 1931 of a cerebral hemorrhage. Anna seems to have died before reaching the age of 10. But what happened to Kathleen?

I found her in the 1921 Canada census living as a boarder with a family in Fredericton, her hometown. She was listed as a student, though it doesn't say what school she was attending. So she seems to have gone on to some higher education, which is awesome. I'm not sure what opportunities there were for a young woman in Canada in 1921, but she seems to have set about  creating her own opportunities through education. The following year, she went to Boston, Massachusetts, where she apparently lived on her own - the US federal census for 1930 show she worked as a bank clerk, and lived by herself. She went back to Canada briefly in May 1930 (the border crossing record shows she was there for five days), then came back to the Boston. The border crossing also gives her physical description - 5'5", medium complexion, brown hair, and blue eyes. As her mother died in 1931, I wonder if that trip to Canada was the last time she saw her mother alive. After 1931, she was the last member of her family left.

Nine years later, in 1939, she declared her intention to become an American citizen. She was still living in Boston, working as a cashier. This may have been the same job that she was working in 1940, when the census listed her occupation as a saleslady in a department store. Then in 1942, she officially applied to be naturalized as an American. Her petition for naturalization is fascinating, as it gives her physical description - 5'5", 118 lbs, blue eyes, but her hair by that time had turned gray. She listed her address as 78 Carver St. in Boston.

Kathleen Gibson's signature from her petition for naturalization in 1942.

In 1944, Kathleen's name appears in a newspaper article asking for information on her whereabouts. Her aunt, Mary T. McDonald, had passed away in Butte, Montana, and Kathleen was one of her heirs. That is really interesting that her aunt (who apparently lived and died single, as Kathleen would herself do) who, according to her death certificate had lived in the US from around the time of Kathleen's birth, would list Kathleen as an heir to her estate. I hope somebody let her know, and that she was able to receive whatever her aunt left her. I wonder if I could find probate records for Mary and see what her bequest to Kathleen was? The fact that Kathleen was listed as a relative's heir leads me to hope she stayed on contact with her extended family back in Canada.

Twenty years later, she was still living at 78 Carver St., and worked as a clerk at the Trailway Bus Terminal. She worked there through at least the mid-1960s. By 1971, Kathleen had retired, but was still at 78 Carver St. Sometime between 1972 and 1977, she moved into an apartment on Boyle St. in Boston. I can't imagine what that was like for her - leaving the home she had lived in for more than 30 years, and probably downsizing to an apartment to live out her retirement years. She wasn't at the Boyle St. apartment for more than a few years, as she was in the Jamaica Towers Nursing Home in 1981. Kathleen passed away in Boston on 13 February 1983, perhaps in the nursing home.

Kathleen's story hit me for a few reasons. One, she outlived everyone in her family by more than half a century. That must have been incredibly lonesome for her - no siblings, no parents, just herself on her own, miles from where her family had passed away. Also, she never got the chance to be a sister-in-law, or an aunt, or a wife or mom or grandmother. I don't mean to say that her life wasn't fulfilling and happy, I sure hope it was. I just see what those relationships mean to my wife and the other women in my life, and it saddens me that she didn't get a chance to experience them.

Another aspect of her life that interested me was the changes in society from the time she was born until she passed away. When she was born, electricity and automobiles were still brand new. She would have seen the introduction of telephones, television, and space travel. She could have grown up in a home and town with little or no electricity, and near the end of her life gone to see Star Wars in the theater. That boggles my mind.

I'm glad I looked into Kathleen's life. If I'm ever in Boston, I would love to look up where she is buried and pay my respects. She seems to have lived a good life, worked hard, enjoyed the fruits of her labors, and stayed in touch with extended family even though she lived far away. That's an example worthy of emulation.