"The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White," by Daniel J. Sharfstein

As many of my readers already know, John P. Gibson, my South Carolina-born great-great-great-grandfather, has become my proverbial brick wall, and during the past ten years, I have read anything and everything that I could find about the Gibson family of South Carolina.  It seems that John P. Gibson was one of many Gibson family members, including Stephen, Tobias, and Gideon, who migrated to Mississippi during the early 1800s. In fact, Port Gibson, Mississippi, formerly known as "Gibson's Landing," and the town dubbed by General Sherman as the town "too beautiful to burn," was named for members of this Gibson family.  Several times in the past, I have posted here on this blog about my unsuccessful research attempts to connect my John P. Gibson to these other Gibson family members or to discover the name of John's parents in South Carolina. 

So yesterday, when I was about to put away the Gibson family file for yet another time, I received an email from a reporter with a Kentucky newspaper who wanted to interview me about my connections to the Gibson family of South Carolina.  It seems that she had seen links to blog posts that I had written about the Gibson family, including my post entitled, "Ghosts of Our Ancestors." When we spoke by phone earlier today, the reporter explained to me that she is writing an article centered around the subject matter of a recent book that traces three families of African-American heritage, including the Gibson family of South Carolina, as they transitioned from black to white during the past two centuries. The book is entitled "The Invisible Line:  Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White," and is written by Daniel J. Sharfstein, an associate professor of law at Vanderbilt University, who teaches courses on property, legal history, and race and the law. In his well-researched book that has already received some fantastic reviews from well-known publications, Sharfstein also chronicles the Spencer Family of Kentucky and the Walls Family that settled in Washington, D.C.  Needless to say, I am anxious to read my contact's article that may include references to my interview today and to read Sharfstein's new book. In fact, I just ordered the book and will be writing a review on this blog in the very near future.  

John P. Gibson - was his father also John?

Where was John P. Gibson living before he married Margarett J. Williams on January 3, 1843 in Monroe County, Mississippi? This has been a burning question that has plagued my family research efforts for way too long.

Yesterday, however, I may have made some progress in the search. According to another researcher's information, Joseph L. Gibson, John's relative in Monroe County, Mississippi, may have owned some land in Lincoln County, Tennessee. According to this information, Joseph L. Gibson deeded a parcel of that property to a son-in-law before he died. So I decided to search U. S. Census Records for Lincoln County, Tennessee.

Why had I not found this before? Lincoln County, Tennessee and Monroe County, Mississippi are not that far apart. I knew I might be on to something here, so I forged full steam ahead and checked out U. S. Census records for Tennessee, for 1830 and for 1840. I was pleasantly surprised.

According to the U. S. Census taken in 1830, John Gibson was enumerated in Lincoln County, Tennessee. He was between 70 and 80 years old. Another male, between 30 and 40 years old, was included in that household. Also present were three females under twenty years old, and another female, between the ages of 70 and 80. In 1840, the household only included the two oldest individuals. The second male in the household in 1830 was likely my John Gibson. Since John P. Gibson was over 44 years old when he married Margarett J. Williams, it was likely his second marriage. The three females living in the household in 1830 may have been three underage daughters from his first marriage. It is possible that he and his daughters lived with his parents until each daughter was married, and then he married a second wife. I also noted a Williams household several houses away on each sentence. Possibly, Margarett was related to this family. Another significant bit of information was the name "Zebie Gibson" that appeared two houses away from John Gibson's household on the 1840 census. Was this John's son, or was it John's brother.

I believe that Zebie may be just the name I need to link John P. Gibson to the rest of his family.

And the search for John P. Gibson's family continues.

The Gibson Family - Blurred Racial Lines

As I wrote in an earlier post, my research into the Gibson family, even from the beginning, has directed me into areas that discuss blurred racial lines. Some of the first material I found that mentioned the Gibson family of South Carolina was contained in a PBS Frontline special that profiled "blurred racial lines of famous families."

The Gibson family was included in this PBS Frontline material, because a number of genealogists have attempted to trace the ancestry of two recent U. S. presidents to the South Carolina Gibson family. Another source of information, included in the Frontline special background materials, was a reference to Winthrop Jordan's book, "White Over Black." In this book, a published doctoral thesis, Jordan mentions Jacob and Joseph Gibson, who are identified as a son and a grandson, respectively, of Randal Gibson. According to Jordan's book, as well as other sources of information I have reviewed and written about, Randal Gibson was a descendant of the South Carolina Gibson family, a family of colour that migrated from South Carolina to Mississippi, Kentucky, and Louisiana.

Another source of material that discusses the likely ethnicity of the Gibson family is the work of Paul Heinegg, Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, and Delaware." This work lists surnames by area or location, and can be found at http://www.freeafricanamericansofcolor.com/.

According to Heinegg's book, which was also mentioned in the PBS Frontline special, the Gibson family likely descended from Gibson Gibson, born in the mid-1600's to Elizabeth Chavis. Gibson and Chavis are both surnames that can be found among "core surnames" of a controversial and widely-researched "tri-racial isolate" group, known as Melungeons, that lived in the Southeastern portion of the United States. More can be read about the this group at http://www.melungeons.com.

In June 1977, Erique Eugene Gildemeister drafted the results of his research about the racially mixed people of South Carolina, entitled “Local Complexities of Race in the Rural South: Racially Mixed People in South Carolina.” (B. A. thesis, Board of Study in Anthropology, State University of New York, College at Purchase, Purchase, New York, 1977.) Gildemeister's thesis discusses the various groups of people who lived in South Carolina, including those who were of African and Indian descent.
One conclusion drawn by Gildemeister seems to be that blurring of racial lines between whites and other people who have varying degrees of darker skin, or "mixed-blood", regardless of the specific type of ethnic ancestry, may have enabled the latter over time to be accepted as "white."

Still, I have no pictures of any relative who bore the surname Gibson, so I don't know that I will ever know the true ethnicity of my Gibson ancestors. But at this point, the case for their mixed-racial heritage seems to be a fairly strong one.