Butte County
Biographies
EDWARD L. GIBSON
EDWARD L. GIBSON.--A very responsible and therefore successful officer, who rose in the civil service until he became Chief of the Identification Bureau of the great city of San Francisco, is Edward L. Gibson, who was born at Portland, Ore., in 1860, the son of Capt. O. B. Gigson, a native of Readfield, Maine. The father was a ship-builder, a seafaring man, and the owner of the vessel Briggs. Edward’s grandfather and great-grandfather were both ship-builders and sea-captains in the merchant marine, and belonged to that sturdy race of early Yankees who once made John Bull sit up and listen. His father made his first trip to San Francisco in the fall of 1847, and became a master mariner for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, in whose service he went back and forth to China until he retired, thirty-five years ago. Then he located near Chico at Cohasset, and there he farmed for years, dying while visiting his son, in San Francisco, July 3, 1903.
Captain Gibson’s wife was Miss Abbie Young before her marriage, and she came from Farmington, Maine, where she was born. She was a daughter of John Young, who was a blacksmith by trade and who died in Illinois. Mrs. O. B. Gibson was the mother of seven children, six of whom grew to maturity, and five of whom are still living. She died December 25, 1901, while on a visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward L. Gibson in San Francisco.
The second youngest of these children, Edward L. Gibson, passed his boyhood in San Francisco, where he attended the public schools and, in 1884, came to Cohasset, Butte County, where he found employment in various lines on ranches and in lumber mills. When he returned to San Francisco, it was to take a place on the police force, and in time he became a detective, or plain-clothes man. Rising step by step and solely through acknowledged ability, Ed. became chief of the identification bureau, and had much to do with handling the criminal classes and clearing up mysteries.
After twenty-two years of such untiring service, he retired and, in 1911, returned to Chico, and associated himself with the district attorney’s office and the sheriff’s office, as a deputy sheriff, being appointed in December, 1916, as probation officer. His work for years in connection with delinquent juveniles especially fitted him for his new and responsible task, and few officers have given greater satisfaction either to Probation Judge Murasky, in San Francisco, or to his fellow citizens in Butte County. The old homestead, with its three hundred twenty acres at Cohasset, has been retained by Mr. Gibson.
Some years ago Mr. Gibson was married at Chico to Miss Alice A. Chamberlain, a native of Terra Cotta, Ill., who was reared here from her first year, and she has shared his participation in social life and in activities of the Christian Science Church. Mr. Gibson is a Republican in national politics, and a veteran fireman in San Francisco, being Past President of the Veteran Fireman’s Association of San Francisco, and a member of the Police Aid Association at San Francisco; he is also a member of Chico Lodge, No. 423, B. P. O. Elks.
Transcribed
by Roseann Kerby.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Page 1116, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Roseann Kerby.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies