September 22

Asa Gibson was born 22 September 1848 in Braxton County, West Virginia

Asa Gibson was my great-great-grandfather, the father of Lora Gibson Burford

Lora and Alexander Burford were the parents of my grandfather Lester Morris Burford.

The Gibson family traces back to before the Revolutionary War in this country. 

[Actually, according to the FamilySearch website, the Gibson family traces its roots all the way back to ... (wait for it) ... Adam's daddy -- God! Well, this is the branch of the family tree that holds the genetic lineage for bipolar disorder, so...]

Asa Gibson was the son of Smith Gibson and his first wife Rebecca Ocheltree. I don't have a picture of Rebecca. I have a picture of Smith Gibson with his 2nd wife, Emily Stanley, with Asa and his wife Adaline Lucretia Gard.

Here is what my mother said (in an email) about the Gard family when she was researching the family history --

“I think I told you about finding the Gards (my Grandma Burford's mother's family). I really fell into that -- those people must have kept good records. I thought there for a minute that I would get back to Noah any minute if it didn't stop.” 

I haven't tried to trace the family lineage of the Gards on FamilySearch -- maybe I'll do that later today. Mom was using other sources, and I'm not sure what they were. FamilySearch is run by the Mormon (LDS) church, and is supposedly THE authority on family genealogy. But it is "user-generated" content, for the most part, and I've found a lot of errors there. So I take it all with a grain of salt.

Anyway, back to Asa Gibson...

Smith Gibson's grandfather was Nicholas Gibson.

Nicholas was a Revolutionary War soldier. There are a lot of colorful stories about him on the internet, but the details don't match up, so there's no telling what's true and what is not.

Nicholas was the son of John Gibson, who is well-documented as a governor of the Indiana Territory (before it became a state). Nicholas' mother was the daughter of Chief Shikellamy of the Oneida tribe. She was killed (some versions of the story say she was captured) in the Yellow Creek Massacre of 1774 when Nicholas was a young boy. 

That's as far back as I'm going to go right now, but I might come up with more interesting Gibson/Gard history later today...