Family Diaspora

The descendants have spread far and wide. Here is an overview of what I know thus far, which is very much incomplete and in progress.

• Christopher Gibson died about 1843-1844. His widow Elizabeth Gray remarried with Thomas Johnston about 1844. When Thomas died in 1861, Elizabeth was a widow once again. But the brothers and sisters stayed together until the early 1870s and then went their separate ways.
  • James Gibson (1840-c 1887) was the first to leave. He married 8 Sep 1870 (in Pickering to Janet Smith). They must have moved almost at once to Euphrasia, Ontario. I do not know when James died, but it must have been hard on the family, since all the minor children show up in separate homes as servants and domestics in the 1881 census of Euphrasia. Their children lived in wide-spread places.
    1. John Gibson (c1871) stayed in Ontario, living in Artemesia in 1891 and Gravenhurst in 1938. He apparently is the John Gibson who erected the monument at Groveside Cemetery near Brooklin, Ontario for his uncle Thomas Gibson.
    2. Elizabeth Mary Gibson (1873-1913) married Frank Gibson (not known if he was related) 1893 in York County, Ontario, when she lived at Newton Brook. They moved west, living in Monteith, Ontario in 1901, in Souris, Manitoba in 1906, and in Medicine Hat, Alberta in 1911. She died Hand Hills, Alberta in 1913. Their son Frederick Gibson (1893) stayed in Medicine Hat, mnarried Bernadina Evenson and raised 5 children there. But Frank & Elizabeth's daughter Hilde Blanche Gibson (1902 Manitoba-1971 Ontario) moved back to Ontario, where she married Donald Wallace Clapper, brother of the famous hockey star Aubrey Victor Clapper and raised 2 children.
    3. Christopher Gibson (1875) is last known in Euphrasia, Ontario in 1891, a domestic in the home of William & Margaret Lewis, but I have not found any information on him after that.
    4. Thomas Gibson (1876) is last known in Euphrasia, Ontario in 1891, a domestic in the home of Edwin & Eliza Cullis, but I have not found any information on him after that.
    5. Robert Gibson (1878) is last known in Euphrasia, Ontario in 1903, when he married Martha Jane Irwin, but I have not found any information on him after that.
    6. George Henry Gibson (1880) came to Chicago in 1886 or 1887, apparently after the death of his parents. In 1900, he was living with his aunt Ellen (Gibson) Cook and her husband George Cook at 103 Stephenson Street, not far from her half-nephew (and George Henry Gibson's half-cousin) George Johnston's family at 7242 South Dobson. In 1909, George Henry Gibson married Josephine A. Smith in Chicago. They lived at 5017 N. Erie in 1910. By 1930, he had remarried to Alice (maiden name unknown) and lived at 3427 W. 115th Place. I do not know if he had any children. The last record that I have found for him is his 1942 WWII draft registration, still liveing at 3427 W. 115th Place, but apparently no longer married, working at the Pullman railcar company.
  • In 1881, Ellen Gibson, her husband George Cook (married 1863), Christopher Gibson, and John Johnston all moved with their spouses and children to Chicago, where all are buried (John in Mount Greenwood Cemetery & his wife and son in Oakwoods Cemetery - click here for more information on family graves at Oakwoods Cemetery). Their known descendants range from coast to coast in the United States. As it turned out, both the Cook and Johnston descendants had branches in Danville, California, at different times.
  • Thomas Gibson remained with their mother Elizabeth (Gray) Gibson Johnston in Pickering. She must have died between 1881 (when she is in the census, as Elizabeth Gibson) and 1895 (when he finally married), but I have never found any information on her death. Thomas married a Toronto widow and apparently had an unusual arrangement in which he lived in Brooklin, Ontario and his wife and her children continued to live in Toronto. He died in Brooklin in 1916 and is buried in Groveside Cemetery. His cemetery monument was erected by his nephew John Gibson, probably the oldest son of Thomas's brother James.

• John Gibson moved to Orillia, Ontario by 1871 and apparently died there. His family seems to have mostly stayed in the Orillia area. However, this is the branch on which I have done the least research. So I could find more descendants further flung. But as late as 1911 most of the children and their families all seem to have been together in the census.

• Thomas Johnston died in Pickering Township in 1861, leaving the Johnston Family Bible to his son John Johnston. John married Emma Butson in 1874. They moved to Chicago in 1881. Their son George Henry Johnston (born in Pickering Township in 1877) was my great-grandfather.

• Elizabeth Gray Gibson Johnston remained in Pickering Township, apparently dieing between the 1871 and 1881 censuses, but thus far I have found no record of her death or burial.