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My grandmother, before she died, always held that she had an Indian great-grandmother. I have been doing some research to find out whether this is true, but cannot find anything to confirm or deny her claim. One thing that does seem to support her claim is that my grandma actually died of a rare type of gall bladder cancer which seems to mainly plague people of Native American descent.
This woman my grandma remembers was named Phebe Jane Gibson, born in Clay County, Indiana, in1857. Her parents were Delila Yocum born May 1827 in Montgomery county, KY (whose father James Yocum I can trace to European ancestry, but whose mother, Elizabeth Clark of Kentucky b.1810 remains a mystery) and John Gibson, born in Kentucky in 1819, for whom I can find no family history.
I know these all sound like European names, but we all know that many Indians took or were given “Christian” names as America was being colonized.
I’m just trying to substantiate my Grandma’s claim, find out what tribe she may have been from (Shawnee?) and try to fill a gap in my own family history.
If you use the search feature here for the word “Gibson” you’ll see that it’s come up often. KY comes up often, too. I don’t know about other tribes, but the name does come up among people thought to be Saponi descendants.
Welcome.
True, that’s actually how I found this site. However, I haven’t quite found the match on here yet. Thanks for replying!
This might not mean anything but Col John Gibson was married to Chief John Logan’s sister. She was killed along with her brother at Yellow Creek setting of the Dunmore War. Col John Gibson was the commander of Ft Pitt and close friends with Col Morgan Morgan’s son Zackquill Morgan the founder of Morgantown. This is the same Morgan family as Morgan Bryan the grandfather of Daniel Boone’s wife. There was an issue if Col John Gibson’s child was killed in that same incident. Some say no and some say it was a son with the last name of Gibson. Something tells me that Col John Gibson was related to Col Morgan Morgan and thus to the Boone family of Daniel Boone.
Gibson is a name that I’ve seen in many conversations about families felt to be Saponi. It’s not one of the only half dozen or so that can be traced to tribal Saponi, but there were Gibsons married in with people with those names, so I consider it pretty much a core name.
Janina, the Saponi people were “civilized” about 75 years before the “Five Civilized Tribes” and were taking European names as early as the 1740’s or so. The historical record for the tribe in the southeast runs out before 1750, with the “Tutelo” being adopted by the Cayuga in Canada. We’ve seen many families we believe were Saponi-descended migrate into Appalachia, especially Kentucky.
Larry, the Gibson name in PA is probably coincidental, since I believe we do see it here in the southeast. Doing a little survey on the occurence of the name here would prove/disprove that theory I suppose. The connection to Chief Logan is intriguing though, since we do know that a Tutelo lady married Schickelamy, Logan’s father, I believe. The early Anglicazation of the Saponi/Tutelo made them useful in diplomatic circles, a likely contributor to that union.
A coincidence in the Gibson case on this thread? Most likely. A coincidence that Col John Gibson was married to Chief Logans sister? No that’s not a coincidence. These are well recorded families and a well recorded incident. It involved Col Andrew Lewis, Col William Preston, Chief John Logan, The Greathouse family, Major Michael Myers, Col William H Crawford, Lord Dunmore, the Morgan family of Col Morgan Morgan which included Morgan Bryan family of Danel Boone’s wife and a whole cast of people from Auburn and Albany NY and Norfolk VA.
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