Cascade County - Biography Paris Gibson December 3, 2004 Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm Submitted by: Lorene Frigaard lorfri99@bmi.net Montana, Its Story and Biography; A History of Aboriginal and Territorial Montana and Three Decades of Statehood. Tom Stout, Editor. Vols. I-III. Chicago and New York: The American Historical Society, 1921. __________________ HISTORY OF MONTANA Page 657: Hon. Paris Gibson.  Among the state soldiers of Montana the name of Paris Gibson, who died December 16, 1920, will always have a high and important rank.  His influence has been felt in the broad development of the state, though his chief and particular fame rests in his title as "Founder of Great Falls." He was probably not the first to recognize the commercial possibilities of the Great Falls of the Missouri River, but his initiative and practical experience in the use and development of water power enabled him to bring fantastic dreams down to the place of realized facts. Mr. Gibson was real American by inheritance as well as by the most exacting standards of modern times.  He was born at Brownfield, Oxford County, Main, July 1, 1830, a son of Abel and Ann (Howard) Gibson.  His first American ancestor, John Gibson, was born in England in 1631.  In the maternal line his ancestor James Howard was a resident of Massachusetts as early as 1643, and in the Howard line Senator Gibson was the grandson of a Revolutionary soldier, while his grandfather Gibson was a soldier in the French and Indian war. Paris Gibson was liberally educated, attending the Fryburg Academy at Fryburg, Maine, and graduating in 1851 from Bowdoin College in Maine.  Just half a century later, in 1901, Bowdoin conferred upon him the honorary degree of L.L. D.  He left college to become a farmer, and enjoyed his first active participation in politics in his native state.  In 1853 he was elected a member of the Maine Legislature. In 1858 Paris Gibson came west and located at the chief industrial center of what was then the northwestern frontier, Minneapolis, or St. Anthony's Falls.  Minnesota was still a territory.  He was a resident of Minneapolis for over twenty years, and helped establish some of the earliest industries in that great city.  In 1858, with William W. Eastman, he built the first merchant flour mill at Minneapolis, known as the Cataract Mill.  In 1860 he also erected the first woolen mill, known as the North Star Woolen Mill.  In succeeding years Paris Gibson saw Minneapolis become an important city and the great country around it developed agriculturally.  In 1879 he came to Montana, locating at Fort Benton, where he engaged in the sheep business.  Soon afterward he examined the territory around the confluence of two branches of the Missouri River, known then as the Great Falls of the Missouri.  He possessed the technical understanding of water power development, and from his long residence at Minneapolis had gained the knowledge and the initiative to make use of the possibilities at the Falls in Montana.  In 1884 he founded the City of Great Falls, and about that time he interested the late James J. Hill in the site.  The City of Great Falls, like many other portions of the Northwest, owes much to the genius of the master railroad builder, but the presiding genius of Great Falls from the beginning was the veteran statesman and business man, Paris Gibson.  In recent years Mr. Gibson suffered almost a complete loss of site, but long before that misfortune intervened he had the satisfaction of seeing a wonderful fruition to his early hopes and plans regarding Great Falls. While Paris Gibson had been less of a politician than many men of smaller note in Montana, he enjoyed exceptional honors at the hands of his fellow citizens.  He helped draw up the organic law of the state as a member of the first constitutional convention of 1889.  He served as a member of the Montana Senate in 1891, and in 1901 was chosen United States Senator for the unexpired term of William A. Clark.  This last honor was the more gratifying because he had never considered himself as a possible candidate for the office.  He served in the United States Senate until 1905.  Senator Gibson was a democrat, and while a resident of Minneapolis was a member of the Church of the Redeemer, Universalist, and at Great Falls a member of the Unitarian Church. August 23, 1858, at Brownfield, Maine, he married Valeria Goodenou Sweat, daughter of Jesse and Valeria Sweat.  She was born in 1838 and died at Great Falls August 20, 1900.  To their marriage were born four children.  The two surviving sons are Philip and Theodore.  Philip married Mary Douglas August 9, 1882, while Theodore married Mary Johnson April 9, 1888. ________________________ PARIS GIBSON ELECTED U.S. SENATOR Page 458: The short term was settled in open session without the intervention of a caucus, but it was not decided until the early morning hours following midnight of the last day of the session, March 7, 1901.  The result was the election of Paris Gibson, the pioneer and founder of the City of Great Falls.  Although not of the first generation of pioneers, Mr. Gibson was a great force in the established of modern Montana.  He was of English descent, a Maine man by birth, and aggressive by inheritance of ancestors who had fought in the Revolutionary and French and Indian wars.  But Mr. Gibson's bravery and triumphs were identified with the determined assaults upon frontier conditions and the wrestling therefrom of splendid industrial developments.  A college graduate and a member of the Maine Legislature before he went West, he was twenty-eight years of age when he settled in Minneapolis, where, with William W. Eastman, he built the first merchant flour mill at that place, and one of the pioneer woolen mills of the Northwest, the North Star.  He was active in all the developing agencies of that city, where he continued to reside until 1879, when he moved to Montana.  With clear business and commercial vision, he found his ideal center of industry, agriculture and trade at the great falls of the Missouri.  There he secured a town site and platted Great Falls, and shortly afterward interested James J. Hill, the great railroad builder, in enterprise which he had advanced thus far.  Mr. Hill became associated with Paris Gibson in the founding and growth of the infant city, and while the railroad king continued through many years of continental developments to support it from afar, it was Mr. Gibson who never left its side and worked for it and nourished it with all his strength and means like both father and mother in one. Mr. Gibson, however, was too broad and active a man to even confine himself to the province of the founding of a city.  He served as a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1889, was elected to the State Senate two years later, and his service in the United States Senate covered the years 1901-5.  He then resigned to devote himself to his real estate and farming interests, and passed from his busy and productive life on December 11, 1920. ________________________ 1920 U.S. Federal Census; Montana; Cascade County; Great Falls City; Ward 4; Precinct 18; Roll #: T625_968; Page: 14A; Enumeration District: 27; Image: 0405; Enumerated on January 15, 1920: Residing at:  1526 Seventh Avenue GIBSON, Mary D.; head of household; female; white; 58 years of age; widowed; born in Vermont; both parents born in Vermont; occupation: none listed. LELAND, Louise G.; daughter; female; white; 35 years of age; widowed; born in Minnesota; father born in Minnesota; mother born in Vermont; occupation: none listed. LELAND, Douglas; grandson; male; white; 14 years of age; born in Montana; father born in Indiana; mother born in Minnesota. LELAND, William; grandson; male; white; 13 years of age; born in Montana (rest as above). LELAND, John; grandson; male; white; 12 years of age; born in Montana (rest as above). LELAND, Phillip; grandson; male; white; 9 years of age; born in Montana (rest as above). ------------------------- MONTANA DEATH INDEX 1907-1953: GIBSON, Phillip Died:  16 Nov 1915 at 58 years of age Index #: 101-103 GIBSON, Paris (Philip's father) Died:  16 Dec 1920 at 90 years of age Index #: GF 694