Richmond County NcArchives Photo Person.....Gibson, 1851-1922, Thomas Benton ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/nc/ncfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Mary Modlin n/a November 2, 2011, 9:57 pm Source: Unavailable Name: Thomas Benton Gibson, 1851-1922 Photo can be seen at: http://www.usgwarchives.net/nc/richmond/photos/gibson182169gph.jpg Image file size: 12.2 Kb Thomas Benton Gibson, 1851-1922 Transcribed by Mary Modlin. This book is available for online reading or PDF download from Google. GIBSON, THOMAS BENTON, banker and vice-president of the Marlboro Cotton mills, is a type of what determination and patient perseverance can accomplish in these years when the rapidly developing manufacturing interests of South Carolina offer rich rewards for business enterprises and good judgment. He was born in Richmond County, North Carolina, January 17, 1851. His father, Nelson M. Gibson, was a farmer and served as captain in the Confederate army during the War between the States, descended from a sturdy line of Scotch ancestry; and while a devout Methodist, not narrowly sectarian in his religious views. Thomas and Nelson Gibson, brothers, who came from Virginia about 1760 with their widowed mother, settled ten miles northeast of Rockingham, in Richmond county. Their family was originally from Scotland. One of the brothers of Mr. Thomas Benton Gibson's father was an able and conscientious Methodist minister. Another brother, Nathan Gibson, about 1830 moved to Ohio; but before he left North Carolina he had represented Richmond county for several terms in the state legislature. Born in the country and living as a boy upon a farm, T. B. Gibson nevertheless had a mechanical turn of mind, and "was never satisfied at spare moments unless he could be in his father's shop tinkering on something." He feels that the systematic life to which his father trained him on the farm had much to do with the development of traits of persistent, systematic toil which have given him success in his business undertakings. He had great difficulties to overcome in acquiring even a common school education. The "old-field schools are all I ever attended, and these I attended very little after I was fifteen years old," he says. He was but ten years old when the war broke out. His father and his older brother were both in the Confederate army. He was the support of the family--- the only one to whom is mother could look; and he took care of a family of six girls and a younger brother, besides the negro women and children. "When General Sherman passed through, in 1865, the Seventeenth army corps, under General Blair, camped on my father's plantation. They destroyed everything above ground, and took off all of the able-bodied negro slaves, leaving only the negro women to be taken care of." The War between the States and its consequences thus made it impossible for Mr. Gibson, who was but fourteen when the war closed, to secure a college or even an academic education. He worked on his father's farm until he was of age. The next year, he writes, "I hired to my father for eight dollars per month, furnishing my own clothes, and I saved out of that year's earnings about seventy-five dollars. The next year he gave me a one-horse farm of poor land, which he valued at a thousand dollars, and I made the crop that year, hiring the crop gathered." For the six years immediately succeeding he was a clerk in the store of R. J. Tatum (where the town of Tatum is now situated). In 1879 failing health led Mr. Gibson to return to his farm, and two years of farm work restored his health. He began the mercantile business with his cousin, F. B. Gibson, at Laurel Hill, North Carolina, where he remained four years, returning in 1885 to his old homestead, which is now in the center of the village of McColl. In 1884 the South Carolina Pacific railway, the first railroad built in that county, was constructed from the state line to Bennettsville; and the town of McColl was located on Mr. Gibson's plantation. The village grew slowly until 1891, when the ground was broken for the first cotton mill. This modest venture in manufacturing, which started with a capital of about fifty thousand dollars, was the beginning of a company which today keeps forty-five thousand spindles whirling and is capitalized at one million dollars, "chiefly home capital, very few shares being owned north of the Mason and Dixon line." Mr. Gibson has been president of the Bank of McColl since it was organized in 1897. He is now vice-president, has been president, and president and treasurer, and secretary and treasurer, of the cotton mills at McColl since their organization; and since the five cotton mills were consolidated into the Marlboro Cotton Mills company, he has been president of the company. He is identified with the Democratic party. He is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and has served as a steward in that church for over ten years. He has been a director of the South Carolina Pacific Railway company continually since the road was built in 1884. He is chairman of the board of trustees of the public schools of McColl, and was one of the principal contributors to the erection, recently, of a central graded school building, erected by public subscription at a cost of over twelve thousand dollars. While Mr. Gibson's spirit of enterprise, hopefulness, and ambition for the town has had a strong effect for good upon the development of McColl, the gradual cutting up of what he styled his "one-horse farm" into village lots has given to Mr. Gibson a large part of the benefit of that "unearned increment" which comes from the massing of population upon small areas of land. A population of over twenty-five hundred people, with one bank, three churches, a good school building, has grown up rapidly upon Mr. Gibson's old cotton field; and the prosperity which has come to Mr. Gibson as a consequence his fellow-citizens rejoice in, because he has shown from the first a disposition to inaugurate and administer important business enterprises with a public spirit which has brought a degree of prosperity to all the inhabitants of the place, and not to himself alone. In his own childhood, and since he established a home of his own by marriage, Mr. Gibson has enjoyed deeply and steadily the influences of home; and he does all that lies in his power to promote the erection of comfortable and commodious dwellings and buildings of all kinds, and to encourage the beautifying of the grounds and homes of the community. He was married May 12, 1886, to Miss Sallie Belle Tatum; and of their seven children, six are now (1907) living. To the boys of South Carolina who are planning to make their lives not only successful for themselves, but useful to the community, he offers this advice: "First, get an education at any cost (except at the cost of health); let tobacco, cigarettes and whiskey alone; learn to depend upon your own careful judgment, knowing that without well-wrought plans, thoroughly studied, there can be no permanent success; and when you have decided upon the work in life for which you are best suited, stick to it. There is nothing like perseverance." His address is McColl, Marlboro county, South Carolina. Additional Comments: Source: Hemphill, J. C., Men of Mark in South Carolina, Ideals of American Life, A Collection of Biographies of Leading Men of the State, Volume II, Men of Mark Publishing Company, Washington, D. C., 1908, pp. 174-178. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/nc/richmond/photos/gibson182169gph.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/ncfiles/ File size: 7.9 Kb