EDITED AND ANNOTATED BY HIS GREAT GRANDSON, FRANK LILBURN WELLS A sample page follows. For more contact Mr. Wells at: franklw6108@home.com

In 1906, when he was 68, our Grandfather Gibbs wrote about the scenes of his childhood in New York and Illinois and the adventures of a young man 18 years old joining the forces fighting for a slave-free Kansas.  He had already endured the loss of his younger brother and father to cholera and had done the work of a man helping his mother manage a hotel.  By the time he was married when he was 24 he had worked in the “pineries of Wisconsin”, rafted on the Mississippi, was a cowboy in Texas and braved the Confederate lines returning to home in Illinois in the early days of the Civil War.  He then writes lovingly of his first wife, Lucy Church, and the birth of their children.  His despair at the death of Lucy and baby Reid is palpable.  A tender, moving epilog written in 1940 by his daughter, my grandmother Mabelle Gibbs Lilburn,  expanded his brief account of his later years.

The autobiography is a well-written and interesting narrative.  It shows Grandfather Gibbs to have been intelligent, capable, literate and compassionate.  His success as a farmer and business man is implicit in the later chapters of his story and reinforced by Grandmother’s epilog.  This is a portrait in words which should evoke admiration and respect

Grandfather’s history ran to over 55,000 words written in pencil on school tablets of that day.  These were sent to Grandmother Lilburn by her half-sister, Maude Gibbs Hyle, in 1940..  The typescript, done by Grandmother’s friend Leota Wilson, covers 55 legal size pages, single spaced in the small elite type.  Sadly, the original manuscript was lost in the mail when returned to Aunt Maude; the typescript is in my possession.  A sample of Grandfather Gibbs’ handwriting inserted on the following page suggests that Miss Wilson faced a daunting task!

As I was entering the history into the computer my goal was to make it easier to read without changing the substance or “color” of the original.  I made very few changes in the wording using brackets to indicate where this was done.  Long “run-on” sentences and long paragraphs were shortened.   I have inserted “chapter headings” taken from the adjoining text into what is essentially an anecdotal history.  The boxed annotations were based on personal knowledge or published sources.  Since it is my intention to place a copy in the library or historical society center in Morrison, Illinois, I created a name index.
 
 

I was born July 13, 1838, (so my mother said, I don't remember the date myself) in the town of Hornby , Steuben County, State of New York.  My father was Alanson Gibbs and my mother was Sophronia Gaylord.  My father was born in Vermont, Town of Westminister .  His ancestors came from England and landed at Cape Cod .  My mother [Sophronia Gaylord] was from Connecticut.  My Grandfather Gibbs moved to New York from Vermont with his family about 1825.  The family consisted of three boys and I think four girls, my father being the youngest boy.  My earliest recollections are of the New York home.  A long house standing in a little valley with a large hill on one side of the road called Pine Hill and on the other side was tillable land and a large maple wood in which was my father's sugar bush.  I can recollect seeing them make sugar there.  I can also recollect seeing them make pine shingles.  They would go upon the side of the hill, cut the pine trees, saw them into blocks and roll them down the hill into the yard near the house.  There they were split and shaved and bunched in the lean-to of the house.  This work was done in winter and the sugar was made in early spring.  I have heard my father say that the currency of that country was pine shingles and maple sugar.  I can remember attending school there and getting a severe flogging because I wouldn't rub out a mark [I had made] on the seat I sat on with a dead coal that I picked up from the fire place.  The teachers name was James Wheat .

This was hard country to make a farm.  It was all timber, mostly hemlock and beech and all had to be cleared, then the land was a stiff clay full of stone.  Winters long and summers short.  My father got it into his head there was an easier place to farm and in 1843 he went to Illinois and took a look at that country which pleased him.  Again in 1844 he went back and staid all summer, bought a claim with a house on it and put in the fall of same year.  Sold his farm there and in the spring of 1845 moved his family to Whiteside County, Illinois.

Alanson’s United States land patent  for 80 acres of land in Whiteside County, Illinois, is dated July 1, 1845, as is that of his older half-brother, Luther Gibbs.  This suggests that Luther and family traveled to Illinois with Alanson and his family. Sophronia Gaylord Gibbs’ sister, Emeline Gaylord Jennings and her husband, Squire W. Jennings who also received a land patent on July 1, 1845, may also have been in this party. Based on a land patent issued to John P. Sands in 1848, another of Sophronia’s sisters, Candace Gaylord Sands, later settled in Whiteside County.  Edwin made no mention of these aunts.

I happened to be one of the family, which consisted at that time of two boys and two girls.  I was the oldest boy (7) years and my brother Rufus Leroy, 2 1/2 years.  The oldest girl was Philena Augusta, 12 years, and Lydia Ann, 5 years.

This was before the time of Railroads; at least I think there was but one Railroad in the state of New York at that time which was a short coal road from Corning to Blossburg. I can remember the journey very well. We were put on a canal boat at Tompkins, at the head of Seneca Lake and towed through the lake by a steamboat to the foot of the lake.  There we struck the canal and were towed with horses to Buffalo on Lake Erie.  There we were put on a lake steamboat called the Illinois.  About my only recollection of this boat ride on the lakes is that . . . I was quite sea sick.  I can recollect landing at Monitor Island to take on wood and also recollect seeing the young Indians shoot with their bows and arrows.  The passengers would put pennies in the end of the cords of wood and the boy would shoot at it, if he hit it, he had the penny, if he didn't hit it he didn't lose anything unless he lost his arrow.  But they hit it most every time.

The Erie Canal was an important inland waterway in New York State and is still the principal canal of the New York State Canal system. It was built to connect New York City, via the Hudson River, with Lake Erie at Buffalo, N.Y., and the other Great Lakes. The original canal was 363 mi.) long,  3 ft. deep, with 83 locks.  Gov. DeWitt Clinton of New York initiated construction of the canal, and it was built by the state between 1817 and 1825. It was immediately successful; within ten years, the building costs were paid through the collection of tolls from users. The canal contributed to the dominance of New York as a port city, as well as opening Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and the other Great Lakes states to settlement by immigrants, who were then able to ship produce, primarily grains, east via the canal and receive manufactured goods in exchange

There is a Tompkins County in New York, but that name has  not survived as the name of a town; today the place at the south end of Seneca Lake where the Gibbs family boarded the canal boat is named Watkins Glen.  At the north end of the lake, they went east through the Seneca-Cayuga canal to enter the Erie Canal at Weedsport.  At the west end of Lake Erie, the Illinois would have turned north to go up the Detroit River to enter Lake Huron.  Going through the Straits of Mackinak they entered Lake Michigan and turned south to Chicago.

I can remember landing in Chicago.  Chicago was but a small place at that time; there were no wharfs nor docks for the boats to run up to.  They got as close to shore as the depth of water would permit and run out gangplanks onto the sand and the passengers walked the planks.  The goods were unloaded right on the beach.  Most of the city was on Lake Street and I think all the business houses were there.  There were two hotels at that time.  Lake Street was paved with planks and I can recollect seeing water squirt up through the spaces between the planks as the teams would cross them.  My father had a wagon and some of his household goods on the boat.  At Chicago he bought a pair of horses and loaded his family and goods into it and started for his claim which was about 120 miles west on Rock River.  The first eight miles out was a swamp
and he got stuck in the mud three of four times before getting to the eight mile house which is now Oak Park.  There we found higher ground and from there to our new home was made without further trouble.