From the early colonial period through the earliest Republic, there was always a Henry Gibbs associated with Harvard College. The first Gibbs in Massachusetts, Robert, emigrated from England during the Great Migration and through his commercial endeavors rose rapidly to lofty social heights and great wealth. By the time that Robert's grandson, Henry (1668-1723), attended Harvard, he could feel confident and at ease as a member of the elite of Massachusetts society, a peer of Provincial governors and powerful clergymen. Receiving his AB in 1685, Henry Gibbs was installed in the east parish at Watertown in 1697, just over the boundary line from his beloved Cambridge. Rev. Gibbs was considered to be a fine preacher and was selected to deliver the Artillery Sermon of 1704. Considered to be broad minded by the standards of his day, Gibbs' influence is credited with preventing the spread of witchcraft persecutions to Watertown in 1692-93. Throughout his ministry, Gibbs maintained his connection with Harvard, serving as a fellow from 1700-1707.

The life of Rev. Gibbs' son, Henry (1709-1759), followed a very different course. At age seven, Henry lost his mother and seven years later, while a sophomore at Harvard, he lost his father as well. As the only surviving son (he also had two sisters), Henry came into a considerable inheritance from both sides of the family and was able to live comfortably, if not lavishly. Henry graduated with the class of 1726, but remained at college as a resident graduate, earning a second degree in 1729 and serving as college librarian from 1730 to 1734. Leaving Harvard and Boston behind, he sold off his property in the city and relocated to Salem to begin a career as a merchant, never attaining the success of the previous generations of Gibbs. In 1737, he met and began to court Margaret Fitch, daughter of Rev. Jabez Fitch of Portsmouth, a niece of his brother-in-law. The couple wed on January 31, 1739, but the marriage was not to last. Margaret died suddenly only three years later, leaving two daughters, one of whom shortly followed her mother in death.

Henry remarried in 1747, selecting the much younger Katherine Willard, daughter of the Provincial Secretary, for his second wife. This marriage further cemented the prominent place of the Gibbs in Salem society but brought comparatively little lucre, and only the fortunate bequest of £500 from a friend, William Lynde, helped the Gibbs maintain their lifestyle and social obligations. A theological liberal and political supporter of the power of the crown and broad colonial obligations, Gibbs held several important local and provincial offices during the next several years, including justice of the peace (appt. 1753), judge, delegate in the House of Representatives (three terms, beginning in 1753), and Clerk of the House (1755-1759). In February, 1759, at what should have been the peak of his career, he contracted measles, leaving five children and an insolvent estate with a meager 10s allotted to each child.

The third Henry Gibbs (1749-1794) inevitably followed his father to Harvard. His education was financed by the pooled resources of his recently impoverished family with some additional assistance from the college and from scholarships. Henry received his degree in 1766 after a strong academic career and went on to teach school at Rowley, Newcastle, N.H., and Lynn, before returning to Salem as a merchant. A moderate Loyalist, Gibbs survived the most radical period of the Revolution with his affairs intact and married Mercy Prescott in 1781. Henry died in 1794, Mercy in 1809, leaving a legacy of children to Yale College, rather than Harvard. Josiah Willard Gibbs graduated from Yale in 1809 and went on to become librarian (1824-1843) and Professor of Sacred Literature (1826-1861) at Yale. The next in the long line of Henry Gibbs also graduated from Yale (1814), and his third son, William "of Lexington" (b. 1785), though not a Yale man, became an important member of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Scope and contents:

The Gibbs Family Papers is a heterogeneous collection consisting largely of copies of 17th century documents apparently made by William Gibbs (b. 1785) in the 1820s when studying the early colonial history of Essex County, Mass. Most of the documents relate to Cape Ann and the towns of Salem, Lynn, and Beverly, and include a number of items pertaining to the sale or grant of lands by Massachusett Indians to English settlers. Several are copies of depositions taken from elderly Native Americans between 1680 and 1700, documenting their recollections of the earliest land transactions, borders between towns, and the etymology and Massachusett names for rivers and other geographic features. The collection also includes copies of two letters written by William Gilbert, who bears an uncertain relation to the Gibbs, to his grandparents in England. In the first of these, Gibbs provides an excellent description of the destruction wreaked upon the towns of eastern Massachusetts during King Phillip's War, and the in the second, he writes of being afraid to return home to England due to the depredations of "Turks" upon "richly Loaden" American shipping.

Among the more important materials in the Gibbs papers are Henry Gibbs' (1709-1759) copies of 21 of his 27 courtship letters to his first wife, Margaret Fitch, written between December 27th, 1737 and December 19th, 1738 (the first of the letters preserved is numbered "6", and they continue in unbroken succession until one month before the couple was married). These letters provide an intimate view of the initiation and pursuit of a relationship between members of two of Salem's elite families. From the beginning, the letters are familiar, affectionate, even flirtatious, becoming ever more so over the course of the year. "I ought to look upon myself as somewhat unreasonable in my desires," he wrote in letter no. 8 (the third preserved), "when ye more I am with you, ye more Covetous I am of being so, & yt it is with regrett yt I am even now at a distance from you: however, I can't but regard it as a sure presage yt (if ever it be my happy Lott to live with you) your Company will alwaies be a Source of ye most pleasing entertainment & Delight to me." Elsewhere (letter 10), he wrote "When I mention ye friendship I have for you, I am far from confining it to a cold, Stoical Approbation of ye good qualities I think you possessed of, but include in it all yt is meant by Love considered as an Affection of ye Soul. Tis this tender passion joined with that regard & esteem which reason and judgement approve of, yt is ye only foundation of ye pleasure yt is ever found in Friendship." In this correspondence, Henry eloquently describes weddings, a Quaker meeting he attended, the love lives of acquaintances, local gossip, and above all, often at considerable length, his ideas of love. At several crucial junctures in letter 16, Henry resorted to the use of a code to disguise passages dealing with an apparently embarrassing encounter with a newly married friend. The letters are a rich source for the study of views of love and marriage among the upper classes in colonial Massachusetts.

A second important set of items in the Gibbs Papers are the diaries of Henry Gibbs (1749-1794) written between April 14th, 1789 and May 17th, 1793 (with some gaps). Gibbs' diaries are filled with deeply religious sentiments, fretting over the state of his soul and of the world, but contain numerous references to secular events, and moving discussions of sickness in the family, death, and other major life crises.

William Gibbs (b. 1785) was the author of a genealogical tract, Family notices collected by William Gibbs, of Lexington, Mass. (Lexington, Mass., 1845), and each of the first three Henry Gibbs is included in John L. Sibley's biographies of Harvard graduates.

M-2861
cat. 7/94 rsc

Subject index to the Gibbs Family Papers

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