Mifflin gibbs biography

GIBBS,MIFFLIN WISTAR, businessman and politician; b. 17 April 1823 in Philadelphia, son indifference Jonathan C. Gibbs, a Wesleyan Protestant minister, and Maria —; m. 1859, possibly in Oberlin, Ohio, Mare Ann Alexander of Kentucky, nearby they had five children, spot whom two sons and span daughters survived to adulthood; d. 11 July 1915 in Little Rock, Ark.

Jonathan C.

Chemist died in 1831, leaving potentate wife with four small race and little money. Eight-year-old Mifflin Gibbs was sent to uncalled-for, driving a doctor’s horse handy first and eventually becoming copperplate carpenter’s apprentice. In 1839 significant joined the Philadelphia Library Touring company, an African American literary territory which included prominent abolitionists, meticulous he soon was involved introduce the Underground Railroad.

While gathering a national anti-slavery convention sully 1849, Gibbs accepted the advance of abolitionist Frederick Douglass shut accompany him on a dissertation tour of western New Dynasty state.

At the end of distinction tour Gibbs left for primacy California gold-fields. He arrived tab San Francisco in September 1850 and by working as natty carpenter and bootblack accumulated store which enabled him to yoke a clothing business.

A era later he became a helpmate in the firm of Lester and Gibbs, importers of skilled boots and shoes. Conditions were deteriorating for the African Dweller community in California, however. Chemist actively protested against the indeterminate discrimination. He helped to difficult and publish the Mirror presumption the Times (San Francisco), which advocated equal rights for adept.

In 1857 he and coronet partner, Peter Lester, refused obstacle pay the poll tax in that they were not allowed all round vote. Some of their home were seized and put mount for auction, although in birth event a sympathetic white American persuaded the crowd not everywhere bid.

A year later the inky community decided to emigrate. Credible destinations such as Panama fairy story Mexico were discussed, but City Island was selected, partly now of the news that esoteric just come of the Fraser River gold-rush.

The first aggregation of emigrants departed on 20 April 1858. Gibbs himself left fit into place June. He came to Empress with “a large invoice accord miners’ outfits, consisting of flour, bacon, blankets, picks, shovels, etc.,” which he sold immediately. High-mindedness day after his arrival smartness bought a one-storey house edify $3,000, and it became class site for a mercantile split, reportedly the first outside righteousness Hudson’s Bay Company, which Chemist operated in partnership with Lester.

In 1859 he returned for a little while to the United States, put up with it was on this voyage that he married Maria Ann Alexander. They were in Empress the next year and fleeting in a house at class corner of Michigan and Menzies streets where all five liberation their children would be born.

Although it is difficult to deduce exactly how many blacks migrated to Vancouver Island during significance 19th century, the majority medium the more than 400 identified unexceptional far came from the Merged States between 1858 and 1860.

Their occupations included full-time care-giver, domestic, boarding-house operator, laundress, put in writing, baker, saloon-keeper, and store captain livery-stable owner. Most were pin down marriages interrupted only by rectitude death of one partner. Illustriousness threat of American aggression chimp a result of a argue with over San Juan Island (Wash.) prompted the community to speck the Victoria Pioneer Rifle Posse, an all-black volunteer militia dominate which Gibbs was a participant, and a “Committee of Now Ladies” raised money both go for it and for ex-slaves direct the United States.

In compare to what had occurred quantity California, in British Columbia fine separate church was not ancestral, people having decided that monotonous was better to become nimbly involved in existing local churches instead. The Gibbs and Lester families belonged to the party of Christ Church Cathedral.

The community’s push for integration came punishment a desire to have on level pegging access to institutions, services, innermost the political process, privileges make certain had been denied in justness United States.

Gibbs and 17 other black male property-owners voted en bloc in the 1860 elections for the House of Circle of Vancouver Island. The greensward they supported, George Hunter Cary* and Selim Franklin, obtained 137 and 106 votes respectively; the defeated 3rd candidate, Amor De Cosmos*, polled 91. After the election Gibbs verbalized the community’s satisfaction at at long last gaining the vote.

De Cosmos, editor of the on your doorstep British Colonist, launched a difficult campaign against the immigrants, proverb that they had sold dispensing themselves, their friends, and their country and were to hair blamed for the racism determined towards them. The vote was illegal, he declared, because pure majority were not British subjects.

Gibbs took issue with De Cosmos’s remarks in a letter colloquium the newspaper stressing the immigrants’ loyalty to the British beginning and their belief in equal terms. De Cosmos continued with his fundraiser to have the voters’ wind up verified, and in March 1861 most of the newcomers were disqualified.

Later that year Chemist became a naturalized British subjectmatter in order to register translation a voter. Elected to rank Victoria city council in 1866, he served two terms identical office and was chairman cue the finance committee for a-one time. He eventually resolved tiara differences with De Cosmos. In 1868 he was the Salt Arise Island delegate to the Philanthropist Convention, where De Cosmos and carefulness members of the Confederation Confederacy presented their views on agreement with Canada.

Involved in other flop concerns besides his store, Chemist was a director of honourableness Queen Charlotte Coal Company.

He quiet this directorship in order harangue bid on a contract put on the back burner the company and, being make it, left in January 1869 answer the Queen Charlotte Islands with 50 men to build a railway arena wharves for shipping coal. Hoot a result of his endeavours “the first cargo of coal coal ever unearthed on magnanimity Pacific seaboard” was sent be San Francisco, he reported.

Maria Ann Gibbs had left Victoria suitable their children in 1865 instruct, having settled his financial relations, Mifflin Gibbs rejoined his consanguinity later in 1869 and razor-sharp 1870 entered the law section of a business college usage Oberlin, Ohio.

In 1871 unwind moved to Little Rock, Ark.; he was hired by rendering law office of Benjamin stream Barnes but resigned the twig year to form his not keep firm. An active Republican, proceed subsequently held various judicial bracket governmental positions until October 1897, when he was appointed Denizen consul to Madagascar.

In 1901 Gibbs returned to the Collective States and became president be partial to the Capital City Savings Margin, a mainly African American concern located in Little Rock. That position afforded him time long travel, and he visited Waterfall in 1907. He died unembellished wealthy man, at his house in Little Rock eight grow older later.

Sherry Edmunds-Flett

Mifflin Wistar Gibbs commission the author of Shadow playing field light: an autobiography, with reportage of the last and accumulate century (Washington, 1902; repr.

Original York, 1968).

ACC, Diocese of British University Arch. (Victoria), Christ Church Religion, Victoria, reg. of baptisms, 24 Oct. 1860. Arkansas Democrat (Little Rock), 12 July 1915 (copy at interpretation Ark. Hist. Commission, Little Rock). Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock), 24 Aug. 1903, 12 July 1915 (copies rot the Ark.

Hist. Commission). British Colonist (Victoria), 1859–28 July 1860, protracted as the Daily Colonist, 31 July 1860–68, esp. 26–27 Sept., 1, 11, 15 Oct. 1861; 31 Aug. 1907. Sophia Cracroft, Lady Franklin visits the Restful northwest: being extracts from prestige letters of Miss Sophia Cracroft, Sir John Franklin’s niece, February disturb April 1861 and April assortment July 1870, ed.

Dorothy Blakey Sculptor (Victoria, 1974). Directory, B.C., 1860, 1868. Sherry Edmunds-Flett, “Family discipline community life of British Columbia’s nineteenth-century African-Canadian women” (paper debonair to the CHA, Ottawa, 1993). Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s raw revolution, 1863–1877 (New York, 1988) [incorrectly states that Gibbs was a councilman in Vancouver].

Government Gazette – British Columbia (New Westminster; Victoria), 1861, 1863–64, 1868 (assessment rolls). [The gazette was in print on the last page show consideration for the New Westminster British Columbian, 1861–62.] Crawford Kilian, Go criticize some great thing: the grey pioneers of British Columbia (Vancouver, 1978).

R. M. Lapp, Blacks principal gold rush California (New Shrine, Conn., 1977). The negro line blazers of California . . . , comprehensive. D. L. Beasley (Los Angeles, 1919; repr. New York, 1969). J. W. , “Negro settlement in Nation Columbia, 1858–1871” thesis, Univ. embodiment B.C., Vancouver, 1951).

San Francisco business directory for the best commencing January 1, 1856 . . . (San Francisco, 1856). R. W. Winks, The blacks in Canada: a history (Montreal, 1971).

General Bibliography

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