- Born
- 1856
- Died
- 1885-08-13
- Spouse
- Rose Ann Gibson
- Children
- William Gibson · Robert Gibson · Elizabeth Gibson Redner · Sarah Gibson Gallagher
- Family
- Gibson family of the 1885 loss
- Eras
- Irish era
- Concepts
- heritageirish-arranmorecommunitymaritime
- Within
- Beaver Island archipelago
Summary
William Gibson (born 1856) was the husband of Rose Ann Gibson and father of four children named in the held February 2026 local-history account. The account reports that he drowned with Edward Gallagher on 13 August 1885.
Evidence and limits
The Clarke biographical material corroborates the 1856 birth year, parentage, and marriage to Roseann Boyle. It does not give an exact birth date, the vessel, or the exact place of drowning.
Open questions
- Which contemporary record identifies this William Gibson and the 1885 loss?
- What vessel and location were involved?
- What were his birth, marriage, and burial records?
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.Names William Gibson as Rose Ann's husband and the father of Elizabeth, William, Robert, and Sarah; reports that he drowned with Edward Gallagher on 13 August 1885. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
- The biographical card identifies the second-generation William Gibson as born in 1856, son of Robert Gibson, husband of Roseann Boyle, and the Gibson who drowned. This matches the local-history account’s spouse and children; an exact birth day is not added because the related church material contains conflicting family details.
Added 1 August 2026 · revised 2 August 2026. Recent changes
Cite this article
Beaver Island Archive, “William Gibson”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/people/william-gibson-drowned-1885/, accessed [date], citing Connie Wojan, "The Stories Behind the Names of Islanders Lost on the Great Lakes," Northern Islander, February 2026. (and 1 further source listed on the page).
Last revised 2026-08-02. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.