Gideon Gibson Jr., (1731-1792) A mulatto regulator of the back country of South Carolina and an early proponent of Vigilantism. He was the great grandfather of Randall Lee Gibson, a ‘white’ confederate general.[1]
Migration
Born to Gideon Gibson (b. ca. 1695), a British subject of African origin who worked as a carpenter and who emigrated to North Carolina about 1720, settling near the Roanoke River where on Oct.22, 1728 he married a white woman, Mary Brown, and owned several slaves to work his land. The elder Gibson acquired over one thousand acres (405 Ha.) of land in present-day Halifax County, North Carolina, and on the north side of the Roanoke River in Northampton County. Gibson's family first appeared in the colonial records when they made application for land in the Santee River area in South Carolina around 1730. Gibson had sold 108 acres of his land on the south side of the Roanoke River in what was then Bertie County before moving to South Carolina. Several relatives who had been living on the other side of the Roanoke River in present-day Northampton County came south with him, a response to French supported indian attacks.[2] The migration south was noted when they and others came to the attention of the South Carolina Commons House of Assembly in 1731 when it was announced in chamber that several "free colored men with their white wives" had crossed over from Virginia with the “intention of settling on the Santee River". Some assembled at the commons house objected and Governor Robert Johnson called for the migrants to meet with him. They were subsequently given permission by the Governor and 200 acres having been found “of good character”.
Early life
Gideon Gibson Jr. of South Carolina became a landowner on 12 December 1746 when he was granted a warrant for 50 acres at Duck Pond on the south side of the Pee Dee River where he was then residing. That same day he petitioned the South Carolina Council for 200 acres at Duck Pond for himself, his wife and two children.[3] In 1749 a marriage was recorded in Virginia to a white woman, Mary Martha O'Connell, an English emigrant; He and Martha were the parents of Sarah Gibson whose birth (on 29 July 1745) and baptism were registered in the parish of Prince Frederick Winyaw .[4]
In 1761 Gibson's family took advantage of the British government's land grant policy and resettled in the "backcountry" area of South Carolina, which contained immigrants from Scotland, Wales and Ireland. On 2 September 1755 he recorded a plat for 200 acres on the southwest side of the Pee Dee River adjoining Jordan Gibson. Families from Pennsylvania and Virginia had joined the migration of settlers to South Carolina and their settlements encroached on the hunting grounds of the Cherokee Nation, provoking numerous clashes with Indians who hunted on those lands. Responding British government troops laid waste to many of the Cherokee villages as large numbers of settlers established themselves in the South Carolina backcountry.
Regulator
Soon after, Gibson became part of a phenomenon that remains unexplained. Due to the hardships of working land without recourse to assistance (whether from slavery or indentured servitude) there occurred in early South Carolina beginning in the late 1740s and ending just prior to the Revolution, large numbers of fairly substantial land holders sold their properties and for lack of a better description, simply gathered in communities outside the social order provided by the British government.
Living together in the woods, they did not work and subsisted thru poaching crops, outright theft and as they grew more hardscrabble, highway robbery and raids on the homes and farms of the Gibsons and family. In addition, they abducted women whom became just as criminally proficient, and their ranks swelled with a great many Indians and runaway slaves.
Finally standing idle to the depredations no longer, these 'bandits' were brought to heel by the Gibsons and the other farming families. Located too far from the centers of British colonial administration, they took the law into their own hands. Eventually they caused greater concern to the British government than the bandits they had initially gone up against. These morally upstanding and highly industrious black pioneers with Gideon Gibson as their leader, unfortunately will go down in history as the country's first vigilantes – or 'regulators' as they were known then. It was their initiative that instigated those movements which, a few short decades later, would erupt into the most violent of that kind of action - lynching.
Gideon Gibson had distinguished himself as a builder, farmer, landowner, and community leader. When the British colonial government failed to protect these settlers against outlaws, he became a captain in the "Regulator" militia movement whose stated aim was to protect settlers' property from the criminal activity of thieves, often meting out vigilante justice to those they apprehended. The Regulator movement became a threat to the government and led to the eventual creation of prisons, courthouses, and a system of laws and enforcement in the South Carolina bush country.[5]
Whipping thieves
The most aggressive force employed by this group, led by Gibson, was a good whipping, which was the standard legal punishment for the behaviour they were attempting to curtail. When confronted by the colonial powers, this is what they also meted out to the soldiers sent out to quell them. On 25 July 1767 near Marrs Bluff on the Pee Dee River Gideon was involved in a skirmish with a constable's party in which one of the constable's men was killed and Gideon's brother was wounded.[6] The incident brought matters between the Governor and the Regulators to a head. The South Carolina Gazette, which like the government was far removed from the location, reported in the 15 August 1768 edition that there were two parties of Regulators. One was made up of people of good principle and property, and the other made up of a gang of bandits, a numerous collection of outcast Mulattos, Mustees, Free Negroes, etc. all horse thieves from the borders of Virginia and other Northern Colonies, except it stated that they were headed by one... Gideon Gibson...[7]
In fact, the landowners, led by Gibson, had petitioned for a local court and magistrates, a court nearer than the distant Charleston. The petition had been summarily dismissed. In a move to divide the two parties, Governor Bull pardoned all those involved, with the exception of those persons committing outrages and daring violences upon George Thompson, a lawful constable, and his party, in the actual execution of a legal warrant, at or near Marrs Bluff, in Craven County, upon the 25th day of July last. ... (From the SC Gazette, 6 August 1768). Gibson's marriage to a white woman and his status as a slaveholder provided the foundation not only for his own success as a community leader, but also for his descendants’ journey to whiteness. After the American Revolution, one branch of the Gibson family moved to Louisiana, becoming part of the white sugar-planter elite; some members of the family later moved to Kentucky, where they became successful horse breeders. Along the way, the Gibsons jettisoned all memory of their racial roots.
This group of mixed race plantation owners who finally subdued the 'bush' outlaws and whose descendants by the time of the Civil War had become some of the wealthiest and most politically influential figures of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee - were of the same ethnic origins. The matrimonial alliances of one branch of the Gibson clan, for example, were contracted almost exclusively with congressional, senatorial and gubernatorial families of these southern states. Senator Gibson of Louisiana and the founder of Tulane University was a scion of this family.[8] It is due to memories of families like the Gibsons that when the one drop rule or "any amount whatsoever ascertainable" definition of "negro" was being adopted by a majority of the Southern states, the South Carolina Legislature in 1895 decided not to follow suit. During the discussion on the floor of the legislature, one of the members pointed out that were such a law enforced, "too many descendants of those who had served during the civil war would not be allowed to marry into white families of the same social standing they had long presumed themselves to be". The members finally settled on one eighth or more of African ancestry as their definition of who was Negro.
The American Revolution
Main article:
Black Loyalist
"Tory Refugees on their way to Canada" by Howard Pyle
The principal opposition to the Stamp Act proposed by the British colonial authorities in 1764 and later repealed began in Massachusetts colony,[9] which called on the other colonies to convene a convention of deputies in New York. South Carolina became the first colony to second that motion, and the first to advance towards a continental union, long before the other colonies.[10] This shift in popular opinion was of considerable influence to the other colonies who were divided in their opinions of the propriety of such a cause. The war of the Regulation in North Carolina and Gibsons rebellion in the south were the results of ordinary people defending what was seen as a just cause, not just of far away justice, but against taxation without representation.[11] When the colonial government in Charlestown rejected the petitions for redress of their courts by the bush country landowners, the seeds of the american revolution were planted and by 1771 the tax skirmishes and imprisonment of various patriots had hardened into a rejection of British rule.[12][13] Loyalist Governor Lord Charles Montagu attempted to enforce the 1765 Stamp Act in South Carolina which made him unpopular with the local colonials, He tried to be favorable with the colonials and American rebels, selectively issuing pardons for some of the Regulators. However, it was not enough.(excerpted from Lord Montagu.) By 1771 He had issued a full pardon for any actions taken by the regulators in his state (with the notable exception of Gideon Gibson Jr.) and this led to his departure during the American Revolution.[14] Gibson was from the landowner class and had slaves, when the British offered emancipation of the rebel slaves, this caused some regulators of both North and South Carolina to sit out the war. Lord Dunmore's Proclamation was the first mass emancipation of enslaved people in United States history. This led to Black Loyalists relocating to Nova Scotia settlements where the crown gave to each 200 acres (81 Ha) of land. Opposition to these freed slaves came from nearby Shelburne where slave holders from New York had also relocated. Black Loyalists found the northern climate and frontier conditions in Nova Scotia difficult and were subject to discrimination. In July 1784, Black Loyalists in Shelburne were targeted in the Shelburne Riots, the first recorded race riots in Canadian history.[15] The Crown officials granted land to the Black Loyalists of lesser quality and that were more rocky and less fertile than that given to White Loyalists. In 1792, the British government offered Black Loyalists the chance to resettle in a new colony in Sierra Leone,. The Sierra Leone Company was established to manage its development. Half of the Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia, nearly 1200, departed the country and moved permanently to Sierra Leone. They set up the community of "Freetown".[16]
Death
Gideon Gibson died in 1792, shot by a nephew he quarrelled with. Colonel Maurice Murphy's mistreatment of an elderly Tory during the Revolutionary War angered Gideon which led to his being shot dead.[17] He had nine children: six daughters followed by three sons. He eventually moved his entire family to Adams County, Mississippi, where he continued to prosper until his death.[17] His last child, the Reverend Randall Gibson (1766-1836), was Randall Lee Gibson's grandfather.
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Randall Lee Gibson (circa 1860)
See also
References
- ↑ opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/black-or-white/
- ↑ "Gideon Gibson".
- ↑ Holcomb, Petitions for Land from the South Carolina Council Journals, I:266
- ↑ https://archive.org/.../registerbookforp00prin_djvu.txt
- ↑ http://www.tulanelink.com/tulanelink/gibson3_box.htm
- ↑ "Gideon Gibson - The Regulator".
- ↑ "Gideon Gibson - The Regulator".
- ↑ "Shades of White". The New York Times. 27 February 2011.
- ↑ "The History of the American Revolution, vol. 1 - Online Library of Liberty".
- ↑ "The History of the American Revolution, vol. 1 - Online Library of Liberty".
- ↑ David Ramsay (1 February 2009). The History of the American Revolution. Applewood Books. ISBN 978-1-4290-1741-1.
- ↑ "The History of the American Revolution, vol. 1 - Online Library of Liberty".
- ↑ "The History of the American Revolution, vol. 1 - Online Library of Liberty".
- ↑ Klein, Rachel N. (1981). Ordering the Backcountry: The South Carolina Regulation (PDF). The William and Mary Quarterly. pp. 661–680.
- ↑ Jesse Robertson. "The Shelburne Race Riots". The Canadian Encyclopedia.
- ↑ Ferguson, William Stenner. Why I Hate Canadians, 1997.
- 1 2 Paul Heinegg (2005). Free African Americans of North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina from the Colonial Period to about 1820. Genealogical Publishing Com. pp. 533–. ISBN 978-0-8063-5281-7.
- ↑ http://cambpell.edu/news/releases/su04/ns_rel.0203.html
