WILLIAM K. GIBSON
WILLIAM K. GIBSON, supervisor of Boggs township, Armstrong county, where he is engaged in farming, has been a useful man in his community and holds the respect of all who know him. He was born Aug. 15, 1841, in Plum Creek township, Armnstrong county, son of John A. and Mary Jane (Kennedy) Gibson and grandson of Levi and Jane Gibson.
Levi Gibson, who is supposed to have been a native of Ireland, was an early settler in Plum Creek township, Armstrong Co., Pa., where he hewed a home out of the wilderness and lived and died. There was a blockhouse in the neighborhood in that day for the settlers to take refuge in from the attacks of the Indians, and he himself took part in many of the Indian skirmishes. William K. Gibson remembers hearing his grandmother relate how she and the other women would mold bullets for the men when they were beseiged. The children of Levi Gibson were: John, Matilda, William, Jane, Joseph, Nancy, Sloan and Esther.
John A. Gibson, father of William K. Gibson, followed farming until his wife died. He died in Boggs township. Their children were Martha, Margaret and William K.
William K. Gibson was but six years old when his mother died. He passed his early years in his native townshp and received his education in the public schools there. At the age of fourteen he went to live with an uncle S. M. Peart, an old settler of Armstrong county, on the banks of the Allegheny river in Boggs township. When the Civil war began he went to the defense of the Union, enlisting Aug. 15, 1861, at Camp Meade, in Company A, 78th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. He served three years, and was actively engaged in many important battles, including those at Green River, LaVergne, Stone River, Shelbyville, Tracy City, Chattanooga; going to Florence, Ala., they crossed the river and took part in the engagements of Raccoon and Sand Mountains; the operations in the valley of the Chickamauga and the battle. Returning to Chattanooga they were in the battles of Lookout Mountain, Dalton, Resaca, Peach Tree Creek and Kenesaw Mountain. After the battle of Atlanta Mr. Gibson returned home, and he was mustered out Nov. 4, 1864, at Kittanning. While in the army he contacted smallpox, and has suffered from the effects ever since. Going back to the Peats farm in Boggs township, he was married in that townshp in the fall of 1866 and then settled on the Peats "eighty" there, living at that place for two years. He then moved to a sixty-five acre tract near Pine Furnace, in Boggs township, where he made his home for three years, spending the next three years at Wells Furnace, on the Mahoning river. He then removed to the Stillhouse property on Scrub Grass creek, in Armstrong county, where he remained for another three years, thence going to the Baum property in Boggs township, near Oscar station. After two years� residence there he moved to Goheenville for five years, and then located on a farm at New Bethlehem, upon which place he continued to live for seventeen years. His wife dying, he moved from there to Mosgrove, settling on the place about one and a half miles north of that town where he has since remained. He has taken considerable interest in the affairs of the locality, having served several terms as supervisor, and he has filled minor offices of a public nature, discharging his duties in every capacity with a fidelity to duty which has won the commendation of his fellow citizens. In political connection he is a stalwart Republican.
In 1866 Mr. Gibson was married to Rebecca Gibson, of Butler county, Pa., who died at New Bethlehem, April 12, 18__, aged fifty-two years. They became the parents of four children: Lawrence, born in Boggs township, who is deceased; John Harney, born at Pine Furnace, who is engaged in business as a merchant; Maud, born on the Baum place, who lives at home; and Ella, born at Goheenville, who is deceased.
Source: Pages 864, Armstrong County, Pa., Her People, Past and Present, J. H. Beers & Co., 1914
Transcribed April 2002 by James R. Hindman for the Armstrong County Beers Project
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