My Brick Wall

David Gibson was born probably on May 4, 1838 in Russell or Scott County Virginia. His parents went by the name McKenzie, or a spelling variation of that name.

At some point in time young David and his sister Lucinda who is listed as being born in Kentucky in 1847, were informally adopted by a Gibson family living in Letcher County Kentucky. This is according to a taped interview with Woodard Gibson, David’s grandson.

Both the Gibson families and the McKenzie families had attended Stony Creek Baptist Church in Fort Blackstone, Scott County, Virginia in the early 1800’s. Both families are mentioned numerous times in the surviving church records. It is safe to say they knew each other.

Why were the two, (possibly three) McKenzie children given over to the Gibson’s? Nothing is known for sure, but in speaking with McKenzie family members who I share a Y-DNA match with I was sent the following:

The writer of this story is the male line descendent of William Jesse McKenzie of Flat Gap Kentucky.  In one record he was referred to as “Bud” with a side note of Gibson.  Male line DNA indicates that some matches with this writer carry the surname of Gibson.  At least one of the Gibson’s in question has been told that they were adopted from a McKenzie family, (this is me).  This researcher has heard of the adoption situation in his distant past.  The following is the account of this adoption experience.

Years ago during very lean times for all the families of Eastern Kentucky, one McKenzie family fell into a dire economic situation.  In the event that a total collapse had taken place, the McKenzie children would have been separated going to random homes, undoubtedly without parental consent.  The entire family was about to go under.  As a last resort, some children were adopted out.  The McKenzie’s were acquainted with the Gibson’s and knew they were fine people and they were doing well. They lived in Clay county Kentucky which was far enough away as to not be regularly reminded of the difficult thing that had to be done. The exact number of children involved is not known, but based on information I’ve collected there had to be at least two boys and one girl leaving the McKenzie home for adoption..

The McKenzie family of Meally Kentucky, formerly of Flat Gap were having a gathering and talking.  When the story came up that we had been adopted at one time to a Gibson family and moved out of the area, it may have been Aunt Sue that spoke up.  She emphatically said, “Well, I don’t believe that, if that were true, we’d all be Gibson’s not McKenzie’s.  It may have been Uncle Ray who had been told the story responded with, we came back.  He said we knew we were McKenzie’s not Gibson’s.  William Jesse came back to Johnson County.  It took a little while until he found his family in Flat Gap.  He shows up in the 1880 Flat Gap census as William Jesse McKenzie.

While the above story may be true, there is no factual data to support it, so take it as you will.

What we do know is that David and his sister show up living with John Arvin Gibson and Charlotte Charity Hensley in the 1850 census. The 1850 census has the Gibson name spelled Lipson in the transcript, but in the original you can tell it is a G, not an L. Dave also shows up in the 1860 Census as an 18 year old, still living with John and Charity. Also living with them in 1850 is a Jesse. The reason Jesse is interesting goes back to the story of William Jesse McKenzie, Jesse is listed as being born in 1837 in Virginia, also listed is his sister Julia Anne Gibson, born in July 1837 in Letcher County Kentucky. While it is possible for Charity to have two children born the same year; not with one of them being born in July, and not with one born in Letcher, and the other born in Virginia. This give credence to the story of William Jesse, who lived with the Gibson’s and later moved back to his McKenzie family.

One of the theories floating around about David is that he is the offspring of a random McKenzie boy and one of John and Charity’s daughters, who then was taken in by his grandfather and grandmother, and the whole adoption story was concocted to hide the out of wedlock birth. For this to work we have to have a Gibson girl who is of child bearing age. So who do we have? Jane is the oldest of John and Charity’s daughters born in 1820; Mahala is next born in 1832, which would make her 6 years old, so she is out. Jane, could be David’s mother, Jane marries Isaac Sexton in 1843 so she has about 5 years after David was born to find a husband. Now all we have to do is find a McKenzie boy hanging around at that time.

There are matches in Ancestry DNA to McKenzie’s but they are at the one or two percent matching, putting them at 6^th cousin or so from me. One who has a tree is Christian McKenzie. Christian has an ancestor named Lafayette McKenzie born in 1838; he has a father David Jessie McKenzie born 12 Jun 1811, in Scott County VA. So one possibility would be David Jessie, he would have been 27 when David Gibson was born. If Jane Gibson was the mother she would have been 18; nine years age difference, but that is not unusual. Where this falls apart is that David Jesse was married to Anne Saunders in 1836. Again it’s possible, but he was living in Flatgap, Johnson, Kentucky which is almost 100 miles away, and married to another woman. The other sticking point is the above named Jesse Gibson, possibly William Jesse McKenzie, if his story is true, and then the theory of an out of wedlock birth with Jane falls apart.

How do we know that David is not the biological son of John Arvin Gibson, and Charity Hensley? For that we need to turn again to DNA. This time we will look at Y-DNA. Y-DNA is passed down from father to son, while it does mutate, the rate of mutation is slow, and so a son will have the same Y-dna as his father, and his father, and his father, and so on, and that strain of DNA, called a haplogroup is shared back most times thousands of years. So my Y-DNA is the same as my dads, and my grandfathers and on back to David. David and I would share the same DNA. Davids other sons, and their sons also have the same Y-DNA, so my great uncles, and their sons all have the same Y-dna strain as I do. We know that by looking at how our DNA groups against other Y-DNA samples.

One of the issues we have when looking at Y-DNA is the level a person has tested at. DNA is broken down in markers, and if for example you test at 12 markers, and look at your matches you may find many, if you test again at 37 markers, you will find that some of your matches you had a 12 have gone away. There are two reasons for this. One is that person only tested to 12, so there are no more markers to look at, and since you are now only looking at people who match 37 markers, they are left behind. The other reason is that while you match at 12 markers, by the time you get to 37, your dna and his dna have split, his going down a different path.  In my example at 37 markers my top match is Franklin L. Gibson; we share a genetic distance of zero, so we are very close. I know Franklin and I are related because we actually know each other; Franklin is a second cousin 2 times removed he is from David’s son Delany’s line. However I do not match Franklin after the 37^th marker, because he has only tested at that level. Even with that I know I am on the right track because our haplogroup is the same: I-M253. I have myself tested up to 500 markers, and therefore, those matches I have at that level are without a doubt in my family line, we share a common grandfather; maybe 5000 years ago, but we do descend from one person.

Family Tree DNA has a large number of projects that you can join according to your Y-DNA results. One of those is the Gibson Surname Project, to which I belong. Anyone who has a Surname of Gibson can join this project, and that shows a comparison of all the Y-DNA in the project. So I can see everyone that shares my strain of DNA who have the last name Gibson, or who have a male Gibson in their direct line.

John Arvin Gibson, (sometimes called John R. Gibson), is the son of Archibald Gibson, and Veshta Bathsheba Cole. Descendents of Archibald have taken Y-DNA tests and they are part of the Gibson Surname Project. There is a lot of information out there about Archibald and Bathsheba regarding Native American, Mulatto, or Melungeon heritage, which I think has caused our family line to think we share that ancestry. Later I will show you that that is not true in our case.

Here is a small section of Y-DNA matches who have listed their Paternal Ancestor Name as Archibald Gibson. In this example notice that their haplogroup is R-M269.

Pastor	Archibald Gibson, B: 1760, Pittsylvania Co., VA	Scotland	R-M269
Gibson	Archibald Gibson 1760-1855	Unknown Origin	R-M269
Gipson	Archibald Gibson 1760-1855	Unknown Origin	R-M269

Now we will look at the Y-DNA group I fall into. That’s me on the first line. Notice that all the people in this group have a haplogroup of I-M253. My haplogroup is Y-15583 only because I have tested further than the others in the chart. Y-15583 is I-M253 just further refined.

Gibson	David McKenzie Gibson b. 1838 d. 1910	Unknown Origin	I-Y15583
Simmons	James H Simmons, b. 1848, AL and d. 1880	Unknown Origin	I-M253
Gibson	David Gibson b abt 1842 d 1910 Clay Co, Ky	Unknown Origin	I-M253
Gibson	William Gibson, b. 1662	Unknown Origin	I-M253

So this is proof that David Gibson, my known third great grandfather, is not of the same line as his father’s father Archibald. It is possible that John R. is not the biological son of Archibald, but there is no story of John Arvin being adopted etc. like there is for David. Also note the line below mine; I will discuss the Simmons connection later on.

I probably will never know the exact family that David descends from, records were just not kept, and memories are lost to time. I’m sure that David’s situation was known, who his parents were was known, how and why, and when were all known, but time has erased all that. Maybe someplace in an old family bible or on a scrap of paper David’s story was recorded, but considering most of the people in that place and time couldn’t read or write, it is doubtful.