- Born
- 1881-12-05
- Died
- 1964-12-17
- Work
- Fisherman · Bridge tender · Winter mail carrier
- Parents
- William Gibson · Rose Ann Gibson
- Siblings
- Robert Gibson · Elizabeth Gibson Redner · Sarah Gibson Gallagher
- Family
- Gibson family of the 1885 loss
- Eras
- Irish eraLumbering era
- Concepts
- heritagecommunitymaritimemigration
- Within
- Beaver Island archipelago
Summary
William Gibson was born on Beaver Island on December 5, 1881. A January 1965 Beaver Beacon obituary reports his December 17, 1964 death at his Charlevoix home, marriage to Belle O’Brian, and 39 years of Charlevoix residence. The record is provisionally connected to William Gibson and Rose Ann Gibson by the later local-history account; that account’s conflicting 1970 death chronology is not used.
Evidence and limits
The obituary supplies exact birth and death dates and a spouse, but not parents, burial, children, or occupation. A later local-history account assigns the same 1881 birth year but an incompatible 1970 death at age 88; its detailed career claims therefore remain unconfirmed for this record. A 1907 report names a William Gibson as a mail carrier, but it does not independently identify him by age or family.
Open questions
- Can a census, marriage, or death record explicitly establish his parentage?
- Where was he buried, and did he have children?
- Which route and dates document the mail-carrier work, and can a primary record confirm that the 1907 mail carrier was this 1881-born William?
See also
Sources
See the sources block above.
Kin
In the sources
Helen Collar (1911–1995) spent four decades transcribing Beaver Island census returns, parish registers, deeds and death records onto index cards, and recording what islanders told her. Clarke Historical Library publishes that work. It is a researcher's working file — what a record says, what she suspected, and what an informant remembered, often in the same paragraph — so what follows is what the archive holds, not what this archive claims.
Helen Collar's transcriptions of the parish registers hold a record headed “William Gibson & Rose Ann Boyle”. Whether it concerns the same person is unverified — names repeat heavily in this community.
It names Elizabeth Gibson Redner, who this article is linked to; it names Sarah Gibson Gallagher, who this article is linked to.
- Marriage22 November 1877
- Baptism19 December 1877Elizabeth Gibson
- Baptism27 December 1877
- Baptism20 April 1879Margaret Gibson
- Baptism15 April 1880Ann Gibson
- Baptism18 October 1881William Gibson
- 6 of 7 records in this entry — the rest are at Clarke
These are Collar's twentieth-century working notes. They preserve the language of her informants and of her period, including racial descriptions of Anishinaabe residents, and they are quoted verbatim because altering a transcription silently would be worse. See the register of dated records for what the parish registers record, and the editorial standards for what this archive will and will not turn a transcription into.
Sources
- Connie Wojan, "The Stories Behind the Names of Islanders Lost on the Great Lakes," Northern Islander, February 2026.Described in this archive: Northern Islander, 1850–1856.Identifies a William Gibson as a son born in 1881, a Beaver Island fisherman, Charlevoix bridge tender from 1934 to 1951, winter mail carrier, and a man who died in Petoskey in 1970 at age 88. Its death chronology conflicts with the contemporaneous 1965 Beaver Beacon obituary for this record's William Gibson, born December 5, 1881, married to Belle O'Brian, and dead December 17, 1964. The later occupational account is retained as a research lead, not as proof of the 1881–1964 man's full career. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
- Reports that William Gibson, age 83, died at his Charlevoix home on December 17; states that he was born on Beaver Island on December 5, 1881, married the former Belle O'Brian, and had lived in Charlevoix for 39 years. Its day/month chronology is treated as 1964 because the notice appears in the January 1965 issue and explicitly refers to the preceding December.data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1965-01_Beaver-Beacon
- The held six-page issue scan is paired with the OCR source and confirms the published notice or report; it does not expand the source-specific identity, event, or outcome claims.data1 · beaver-island-archive · scans · beaver_beacon · issues · 1965-01_Beaver-Beacon
- Charlevoix County Herald, February 9, 1907, “Across the Ice.”A report reprinted from the Traverse Bay Eagle names William Gibson as the Beaver Island mail carrier who drove W. C. Germaine thirty miles over the ice to Cross Village. This is compatible with the later winter-mail-carrier account, but the newspaper does not print his age or otherwise independently prove the 1881-born identity. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
Added 1 August 2026 · revised 3 August 2026. Recent changes
Cite this article
Beaver Island Archive, “William Gibson”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/people/william-gibson-1881/, accessed [date], citing Connie Wojan, "The Stories Behind the Names of Islanders Lost on the Great Lakes," Northern Islander, February 2026. (and 3 further sources listed on the page).
Last revised 2026-08-03. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.