Creator: Gibson and Humphreys family.
Collection number: 922
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Abstract: Gibson and Humphreys families of Live Oak Plantation and Oak Forest Plantation near Tigerville in Terrebonne Parish, La., and Sumner’s Forest Plantation near Versailles, Ky. Prominent family members included Louisiana plantation owner Tobias Gibson (d. ca. 1870); his son, Randall Lee Gibson (1832-1892), lawyer and U.S. representative and senator, 1875- 1892; Tobias’s daughter, Sarah Gibson Humphreys (fl. 1846-1885), fiction writer; and her son, Joseph A. Humphreys, Jr. (fl. 1870-1898). Chiefly correspondence relating to Gibson and Humphreys family members. Letters document the period before the Civil War when the Gibson children were in school at the Phillips Academy and Yale College, and while traveling in Europe, and include a discussion about slavery. Post-war letters chiefly document the lives of Humphreys family members and their efforts to improve their financial situation. Among the subjects discussed are Sarah Humphreys’s writing efforts and her support of women’s causes, particularly suffrage; Joseph Humphreys’s efforts to run a sheep ranch near Miles City, Mont.; and the experiences of two female family members who worked at the Post Office and the Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C. There are also a number of letters written by Randall Lee Gibson on family and business affairs and a small amount of financial and miscellaneous material relating to both families.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: There 26 March 1855 letter about two speakers (George?) Fitzhugh of Virginia and Wendell Phillips of Boston, who presented lectures to the students at Yale University on their opposing views of slavery.