James GIBBENS

• General Notes
  • in Fayette Cty, KY < Dec 1802
    
    The elder of two known sons of Benjamin GIBBENS.  Settled in Bourbon Cty, KY, where descendants spell surname "GIBBONS."
    
    Gibbens-Butcher Genealogy (1894):  "As a mere item of curiosity and fact, it may be stated that in a file of old Virginia papers, Thomas and Andrew Nicholson, acting executors, 6 December 1802, advertise 10,000 acres of land in Fayette county, Kentucky, located and for sale on the North Branch of Sandy river.  This land, the notice continues, was surveyed in 1785, and patented to James Gibbon, assignee of David Clayton and William Neberland in August of the same year.
    
    "The records of Harrison county, of which territory the present area of Wood county formed part, show a deed, dated 21 December 1796, by James Warner, of Delaware, to James Gibbons, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, consideration $3,400 -- then a large sum -- for four tracts of land, aggregating 3,400 acres, situated on the West Fork of Rush Run and Middle Fork of Monongalia and Buckhannon rivers.  The latter part of this early document names the purchaser distinctly as John Gibbons.  This gives opportunity to infer that the two brothers, John and James, were then passing across the wilderness of the West, and that eventually one went to Kentucky, then a county of Virginia, and the other, our grand-parent, found a home nearer the Ohio, on the shores of the Little Kanawha river.
    
    "Of the two known sons of Benjamin Gibbens, family tradition states that James, the elder, settled in Bourbon county, then attractively pronounced and spelled 'Kane-tuck,' where the descendants, highly honored, spell the names Gibbons."