James A. Gibson
JAMES
A GIBSON---A New Yorker who has made good as a dairyman in the Golden State, is
James A. Gibson, of Wilton, who was
born in January 11, 1855, in Brooklyn, across East River from the American
metropolis. His father, Alexander
Gibson, a native of the North of Ireland, married Miss Jennie Davis, also from
that country; and as a hard-working laborer he sought to provide for a family
of ten children, two of whom are still living, James and William. Mr. Gibson passed away at the age of
forty-five, and his devoted wife at thirty-five, in Kane County Illinois,
whither they had moved in 1856.
When
James Gibson was eleven years old, he started out to make his own way in the
world. He soon found that he had to
work hard, commencing on dairy ranches; and he has followed dairying more or
less ever since. He grew up in Kane
County, Illinois, and worked on farms near Elgin, and for three years drove a
milk wagon in Chicago. In 1874 he came
West to the Pacific Coast, and on reaching California, settled in Sacramento County;
and since then he has spent all of the intervening years within eighteen or
twenty miles off his present home at Wilton.
He purchased sixty-four and one-half acres of land near Wilton Station,
and there he has carried on general farming, with a dairy of about twenty-five
cows. He is a Republican in matters of
national political moment, but a good non-partisan booster for everything of
paramount concern to Wilton and Sacramento County. He is a passed grand of the Odd Fellows, and is also a member of
the Knights of Pythias Lodge at Galt.
Both he and Mrs. Gibson are members of the Rebekah Lodge.
Mr.
Gibson was married for the first time at Sacramento in September, 1883, when he
became the husband of Miss May Derr, a native of Elk Grove and the daughter of
Henry Derr, who was a farmer. One son, Percy Gibson, bless this union. In the same city, in October, 1890, Mr.
Gibson was married to Mrs. Margaret Bell, who was born in San Joaquin County,
the daughter of Patrick Gleason. He was
a pioneer merchant of Stockton; and his wife Mrs. Gibson's mother, died when
Margaret was an infant. Another son
blessed second marriage, Elmer C., who assisted his father in agricultural
pursuits, and is now foreman of a ranch at Clarksburg. He married Miss Madge Iola Hooper a native
of Humboldt County, California, and the daughter of William and Effie
Hooper. They have one son, James.
Submitted
by: Nancy Pratt Melton.
Source:
History of Sacramento County by Reed 1923. Page 783.
© 2003 Nancy Pratt
Melton.