John B. Gibson was born in Pickens county, South Carolina, July 4, 1841, a son of John Gibson, who settled in the Palmetto state at a date when hickory-bark trace chains were in use, and when the power of the aristocracy in the old state was in its prime. Grandfather Gibson was a Virginian, served in the Mexican war, passing his industrial life as a planter, reared a family of three sons and five daughters and died about 1876 at seventy-four years of age.

John B. Gibson, who resides on a farm near Bowie, came to manhood on his father’s plantation and his majority found him in the ranks of the Confederate army, a member of the Thirty-eighth Georgia Regiment. He had married very young and moved into Georgia, but when the war ended he moved back to South Carolina, and left there again only when he came to Texas in 1887. While he was a man of industry, he was by nature a rambler in his earlier life, and consequently the fruits of the best years of his life were not harvested until near his decline. His first wife was Jane Boyd, a daughter of Robert Boyd. Mrs. Gibson died in 1891, being the mother of James F., our subject; Martha; Henry L.; Nancy; Georgia; Warren R.; Samantha; and Jacob C. For his second marriage John B. Gibson married Mrs. Nannie Rinkle.

Source: B. B. Paddock, History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), Vol. II, pp. 473-474.