Albert J. Gibson
Missoula County
History of Montana, Sanders, 1913

A.J. Gibson, one of the pioneer residents of Missoula, was 
born in Ohio.  He was born on a farm two miles from Savannah, 
in Ashland County Ohio on April 1, 1862.  A few months' 
schooling in the country school house each winter was the 
extent of his educational advantages.  But he had what the 
schools cannot give and that is common sense, an unfailing 
sense of humor and tireless industry.  He was never happier 
than when working out some mechanical problem.  Between 
Sam Seymour, a neighbor and Albert Gibson, as he was called, 
there sprung up a warm friendship.  The fact that Seymour 
was an old man and Albert a boy did not in any way interfere 
with the warmth of their regard for each other.  To Sam 
Seymour Albert took his knotty problems and together they 
worked them out.  Albert had what amounted to almost a 
genius for the use of tools, but the problem that had to 
be solved was how to obtain the tools.  They say that we 
do not value the possessions that we obtain without effort.  
If this is so, Mr. Gibson should greatly value what he has 
acquired, for it has come by the hardest kind of work.  As 
an instance, he secured his first tools by trapping mink, 
weasels and muskrats and selling their pelts to get money 
with which to buy the tools.  That he made good use of 
them is evidenced by the fact that before he was eighteen 
the neighbors were invited to the Gibson farm to a barn 
raising.  Every log, every timber, every part of the barn 
went to the place designed and fitted accurately and every 
bit of the work was planned and done by an eighteen year 
old boy.

When Mr. Gibson was twenty one, his father died.  The other 
boys stayed on the farm and Albert struck out for himself.  
He went to Butte, Montana to work for an old time friend, H.M. 
Patterson.  After five years at Butte he decided to go into 
business for himself.  Looking over the field, he picked 
Missoula for a winner.  In those days it was a village.  
Today it is a metropolitan city.  He and another ambitious 
carpenter became partners, under the firm name of Selander 
and Gibson.

Some time later Bob Menturm and A.J. Gibson became partners.  
They say that poets are born and not made.  It must be so 
with architects, for from building from someone else's plans 
Mr. Gibson soon began preparing his own plans.  He took up 
the study of architecture and before long he was securing 
the most important contracts.  One of his first large jobs 
was St. Patrick's Hospital.  To drive over Missoula is to 
see on every hand evidence of his skill and ability.  He 
built the high school, the Hawthorne School, the Sacred 
Heart Academy, the Harnois Theater, all of the University 
and Montana buildings and innumerable others.

When Mr. Gibson first settled in Missoula, he saw the 
possibilities of the town and as soon as he was able to 
do so he began purchasing business lots.  When he put up 
the handsome brick block, the Gibson Block, his fellow 
townsmen smiled at his folly, but today the Gibson Block 
is in the heart of the town on Missoula's busiest corner.  
Besides this Mr. Gibson owns other important revenue 
producing property.

In 1909 he retired and since that time has devoted his time 
to personal investigations of the roads of the U.S. and 
Canada.  He is an enthusiastic advocate of "good roads," 
and his wife shares his fondness for across the continent 
trips in their automobile.  They were among the first from 
Missoula to drive their car across the country to New York 
City.  In 1911 they made a trip through Canada going by the 
Crows Nest Route.  In 1912 they toured California coming 
home through Nevada, Utah and Montana.

Mr. Gibson was married on January 30, 1889 to Maud Lockley, 
the daughter of Frederic Lockley, a veteran of the Civil War, 
and a pioneer newspaperman.  He was the editor of the Salt 
Lake Tribune from 1872 to 1879 and was the first editor of 
the Butte Intermountain.