About the year 1774 or 1775, or near the commencement of the Revolutionary War, William Gibson immigrated from Armaugh, a town in the County of Armaugh, Ireland. His family consisted so far as now known of himself, wife and four sons. They settled in North Carolina along the Irish Buffalo Creek, in what is now Rowan County of which Salisbury is the County seat. The sons were named William, James, George and Joseph. Joseph, the youngest was about 18 years of age when they landed in America. As all their records and papers were lost on their long and stormy voyage across the Atlantic, nothing is known with accuracy as to dates. The sons all served in the American army during the struggle for independence.
As Joseph is my grandfather, and the branch of the family I am now looking after, we will follow him, as from him it was that I learned all I knew of their history, as I have sat for hours when a boy listening to him tell of their stormy passage across the ocean and of various campaigns and battles and skirmishes and suffering during the Revolutionary War. William and Joseph were both at the battle of Sanders Creek near Camden, South Carolina, where William was taken prisoner and died in Charleston, South Carolina. Two other noted battles I have heard Grandfather speak of as being at, were the battle of Guilford Courthouse, now Greensboro, Guilford County, North Carolina, and the siege of Yorktown, Virginia, where Lord Cornwallis was compelled to surrender his whole army to Washington. As a reminder of his army service, Grandfather had a stiff knee and leg from the rheumation contracted while in the army. I cannot remember of ever seeing him walk without a cane, his knee being entirely rigid.
I should have noted it at the proper time, however, I will note it here that the family born and raised in Ireland was of the class they called “Scottish Irish” or sometimes “Protestant Irish”, they being the descendants of Scottish ancestors who settled in the northern part of Ireland and all Presbyterian in their religious belief. A good portion of Rowan County and a large part of Iredell County, North Carolina, was settled by Scottish Irish and where ever these are found, the Presbyterian Church is in the ascendancy. Now resuming the narrative where I left off: After the war was over the three remaining sons settled along the waters of Irish Buffalo Creek in the same neighborhood, though James the now oldest one living soon immigrated to Tennessee and settled in what was called the Duck River county, which would be somewhere south of Nashville and between Nashville and the Tennessee River. George married a young lady named Locke and his descendants are mostly in North Carolina yet, as far as known, but none of them live in the old first settlement of Buffalo Creek. All are scattered to various points and in different counties.
We will now take up Grandfather Joseph, the youngest of the family: Joseph married Hannah McCree. By this marriage they had four sons and two daughters, namely, William, Ann, Hugh, James, John and Mary. William with quite a family moved to Georgia in the early 1830s and my recollection of him is not very distinct, though while I lived in North Carolina I frequently corresponded with his oldest son. Ann married Jacob Overest (Or as they were mostly called Overeash) and raised a large family. The wife of W.S. Woods is a granddaughter.
Hugh married Lucinda Edminston. They had no children.
James, my father, would come next but leaving him as the present will take note of John and Mary. John married and raised considerable family: four sons and one daughter of which is now living J.W. Gibson, a buggy blacksmith at Newton, North Carolina; Joseph F., a carpenter of Statesville, North Carolina. Of the others, I do not know.
Mary married D.M. Duke. Of them only two are now living. Loretta, the youngest of their family, married a man named Staklether and moved to Indiana. John M. Duke, the only living son, is living 2 ˝ miles west from Statesville, North Carolina.
We will now come back to James, which is the branch we will more closely follow: James married Martha Edmiston. Her mother’s maiden name was Keelough (Keelow). The Edmistons and Keeloughs, or their families at some time came from Pennsylvania. James lived in the Gibson settlement on Irish Buffalo Creek, and here was born the writer, John Alexander, Mary Ann, and Joseph Marrion, and an infant which died shortly after birth. And here it was along the green banks of the Buffalo that I spent many of my childhood and early boyhood days fishing, frolicking, and gambols of all kinds, often with only my sister for a companion, and often with other boys, which were easily found, being but half mile below a mill on the creek. These sports were all weekdays, but on Sunday everything had to be as mute as mice when Tabby was on the warpath. The preachers taught that we would not only be punished for what we done wrong, but for every though of the heart we would have to give an account. No fishing, shooting, hunting or sports of any kind was allowed on Sunday, but all had to go to church (Bothpage?) and listen to the preacher tell what he though about predestination, foreordination, justification, adoption and sanctification, faith, and thoughts of the heart, etc. In 1848 father moved to Iredell County, 2 ˝ miles west of Statesville, North Carolina. Marrion having died when about two years old, there were no children but myself and sister. We grew to manhood and womanhood, when Mary Ann married Neil Stewart Brawley and went to live in the Brawley settlement some eighteen or twenty miles south of Statesville, and near where Mooresville now is. Several years later, I married Ruth Elmira Brawley, a sister of Neil S. Brawley. They were children of William and Nancy Brawley who raised a family of seven sons and five daughters. All are now dead of the sons except Joel V. Brawley, the youngest of the family. Two or three of the daughters may be living. Mother Brawley’s maiden name was Flemming. She had perhaps two sister, married to Freelands which brought the Brawleys and Freelands in connections. In October 1857 I left North Carolina and came to Illinois. In 1863 enlisted in Company B, 117th Illinois Infantry. In July 1865 was transferred to Company H, 33rd Illinois Vet. Infantry and discharged at Camp Butler near Springfield, Illinois, in December 1865. Was at the taking of Fort DeRusy, Louisiana; Battle of Pleasant Hill, Louisiana; Battle of Tupelo, Mississippi; two days battle at Nashville, Tennessee; siege and storming of Fort Blakely, Alabama, and some twenty five other fights and skirmishes of lesser note.
