California Biographies

Source: History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of 
the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with 
its growth and development from the early days to the present (1919)

History By Paul E. Vandor 
Illustrated, Complete In Two Volumes 
Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, California, 1919
 
Notes: Missing+page1185-1186

Transcribed by Peggy Hooper

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives 
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


F. C. GIBSON. � A progressive rancher and dairyman, and an honored 
trustee of the Grant School district, is F. C. Gibson, located three miles west 
of Laton. Not only is he a scientific farmer and dairyman, but he is an ex- 
pert blacksmith and mason, has a forge on his farm and does brick masonry, 
cementing, and blacksmithing for the local corporation. In 1914 he bought 
his home ranch of forty acres ; and now he runs a dairy of twenty-one cows. 
He was born on February Id. 1867, in Grant Township, Boone County, Iowa, 
the son of Franklin Christopher Gibson, a farmer and a Union soldier in the 
Civil War. While a young men the father had come to Boone County and 
there married Miss Martha Walker, a native of Pennsylvania. Grandfather 
Abraham Walker and his wife and family drove across the plains with ox 
teams. 

Our subject was only nine when his mother died at thirty-two years of 
age, and his father passed away in Iowa, in his thirty-eighth year. His 
parents had nine children, and F. C. was the oldest son, and a twin with 
a brother who died. He had three sisters older than himself. He had small 
opportunity for an education, for when his mother died, the family broke up. 
The five children were put out separately, F. C. being indentured to C. C. 
Keigley, a large farmer, lie had to work hard, and at times suffered abuse. 
At the end of three years, he went to work for Keigley's brother and con- 
tinued with him for a couple of years, receiving somewhat better treatment. 
He thus labored for other folks until he was twenty-two. 

While in Iowa, on March 6, 1907, Mr. Gibson was married to Miss Lucy 
Jones, a native of Boone County, and a daughter of David and Lucinda (Dyer) 
Jones, the father being a Kentuckian by birth and the mother a native of 
Indiana. In that state her parents had been married, and from there, in the 
pioneer days, they had moved to Boone County. 

In November, 1907, Mr. and Mrs. Gibson came to the Laguna de Tache, 
and now they own forty acres, for some years under his control, while they 
have just contracted for another forty, across the road to the east. They 
have one child, John Albert, whom they seek to guide to the most useful and 
honorable maturity. Mr. Gibson was so long denied the advantages of a good 
home that it is only natural he should wish to do everything he can for his 
son. A mother's love and father's protection were denied him, and he was 
compelled to work beyond his strength. Grandmother Walker, who was born 
in Pennsylvania, like her husband lived to be past eighty years of age. The 
Walkers came of Scotch-Irish stock ; the Gibsons, of the Pennsylvania 
Dutch. They became early settlers of both Indiana and Iowa, and deserve 
honorable mention in the annals of more than one township. 

One of the honors Mr. Gibson has greatly appreciated has been his elec- 
tion to the school trusteeship already referred to. In that office he has been 
active for those educational opportunities which he himself never enjoyed, 
and which, indeed, few of his generation had placed at their disposal, as 
have the American boy and girl of today.