San
Joaquin County
Biographies
GEORGE A. GIBSON
Among the public spirited business
men of San Joaquin County, a prominent position is accorded George A. Gibson,
who was born on his father’s ranch near Eureka, Humboldt County, California, on
July 15, 1883, a son of George H. and Rosa (Greenlaw)
Gibson, the father a native of Hull, England, and the mother of St. Stephen,
New Brunswick. In the early ‘50s the
father went to Alaska and engaged in mining.
These were trying times to the pioneers’ for in addition to the
hardships endured through extreme cold and scarcity of food and clothing; they
were attacked by hostile tribes of Indians.
In the early ‘60s he located in Humboldt County, California, and bought
160 acres of land near Eureka, where he engaged in farming until his
death. He was a prominent member of the
Seventh Day Adventist Church.
The public schools of Humboldt
County afforded George A. Gibson his education and his father’s ranch gave him
employment when not in school. He
remained at home with his parents until he was nineteen years of age, when he
came to San Francisco and took a year’s course in Heald’s Business College,
where he was graduated in 1904.
Returning home he became bookkeeper for the Northern Redwood Lumber
Company at Korbell, Humboldt County; later he entered
the employ of G. M. Cormick & Co., wholesale and
retail grocers, in Eureka, as bookkeeper and remained there for three years,
when he became head of the Eel River Mercantile Company at Scotia, Humboldt
County.
In April, 1913, he settled in San
Joaquin County and bought fifty acres from the Graham estate, located in the
Live Oak district. Twenty-seven acres of
this ranch was planted to grapes, ten acres to alfalfa, three acres to a mixed
orchard; the balance is bare land. Mr.
Gibson set about improving the property, putting four acres in alfalfa and six
acres in prunes and plums, and when he sold it in January, 1922; he realized a
fine profit for his hard work. Since
then he has purchased a place of forty acres, which he is developing. Besides attending to the improvement and
development of his ranch property, he took an extension course in dairy
husbandry and alfalfa culture in the University of California; he has also taken
a course in commercial law under Judge Gerald Beatty Wallace of Stockton; and
recently completed a course in public accounting and auditing in the extension
course offered by the University of California.
When the San Joaquin County Farm
Bureau decided to employ an executive secretary for their association, Mr.
Gibson was selected as the man best fitted for that particular kind of work,
and on February 1, 1922, he resigned his position as cashier of the Western
States Gas & Electric Company of Stockton, where he had been for the past
four years, and entered upon his new work.
Mr. Gibson served as the first director from the Live Oak Center when
the San Joaquin County Farm Bureau was first organized.
The marriage of Mr. Gibson in Eureka
united him with Miss Winifred M. Young, a native of Humboldt County,
California, and they are the parents of two children: Margaret E. and Howard H.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Page
1239. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 V.
Gerald
Iaquinta.
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