On This Day in Family History - May 14

 Koonay "Anne" Shikellamy Gibson was born 14 May 1741

She was my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother

Obviously, I don't have a picture of her. 

She was the mother of Nicholas Gibson

I do have a picture of him

Nicholas Gibson's father, John Gibson, was a famous figure in colonial America. There is even a whole book written about him, which I only just discovered today:

BOOK REVIEW: No Man Knows This Country Better”: The Frontier Life of John Gibson by Gary S. Williams (University of Akron Press, 2022)

The Founders with whom most Americans are familiar were all on the eastern seaboard: Washington, Adams, Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, and Hamilton. Librarian Gary S. Williams has delivered a thorough and extensive biography of one of the “forgotten founders.” This relatively obscure veteran and statesman was influential in the establishment of American power in the area bordered by the Hudson River, the Great Lakes (up to Lake Michigan), and the Ohio River. The first chapter of “No Man Knows This Country Better”: The Frontier Life of John Gibson begins almost immediately with a description of the man’s many accomplishments:

John Gibson worked with seven of the first twelve U.S. presidents and two of their fathers. He also knew or corresponded with a least a dozen generals from the Continental Army. As a soldier, he served as an officer of increasing rank in every frontier conflict between the French and Indian War and the War of 1812. During the American Revolution, he commanded a regiment at Valley Forge, was in charge at Fort Laurens during a month-long Indian siege, and by the time of the Yorktown Campaign was in command of the Western Department at Fort Pitt. He capped his career by serving as governor of Indiana Territory during the War of 1812, where he provided calm leadership in troubled times.

(I would buy a copy of it, but the Kindle version is $45. That's a lot of money for a book I probably wouldn't actually read.)

If you want to find out more about John Gibson and his wife Koonay "Anne" Gibson, just google it. They're all over the internet.

Koonay "Anne" Gibson was killed in the Yellow Creek Massacre in 1774. There are several different versions of the story of that massacre, one of which has Nicholas kidnapped by the Indians and lived with them for 5 years, after which he was traded back to the settlers for a barrel of whiskey.  (The most famous version of the story of the massacre -- supposedly dictated to John Gibson by Koonay's brother, Chief Logan -- states that the whole family was killed. That can't be true, obviously, because Nicholas lived to be an old man, married and had a bunch of children. If he had been killed, I wouldn't be here! )