Gibson’s Inn
One mystery I’ve been trying to crack is that of Gibson’s Run. Gibson’s Run was a fast moving stream, about 10–14 feet deep in most places. The main branch is described as such:
“It stood about three hundred feet west of Gibson run, and was torn down in about 1869 or ’70. The run was just about where Jefferson street is. It got its water from the sloughs and run northwest and emptied into the Calumet.”
Apparently the run had two branches. The second is described as:
“The other branch they called Gibson run came through Tolleston between Garfield and Grant street, and it run from Eleventh avenue to Roosevelt and Seventeenth”
The inn referenced was Gibson’s Inn (we’ll get back to the run momentarily). It was also known as Gibson’s Tavern, Gibson(s) Hotel, Gibson(s) Station or just plain Gibson’s. The inn is important because it was the first business to open up along the old Detroit-Chicago trail. It was a stagecoach trail before railroads came through, specifically Michigan Central. I won’t talk about Michigan Central with any real detail, but I will mention that company again.
There is a bit of a controversy with regard to the inn’s location. In a newspaper report from the 1930s, a man named John Joseph Harding was successful in getting the media to report that Gibson’s Inn was located on the southeast corner of 14th & Madison, where the old Frobel library sits. A man named Roscoe E. Woods, from Hammond, contended that Harding was wrong. Woods claimed Gibson’s Inn was located in Hammond where “the Forsythe Avenue viaduct will connect with Indianapolis Boulevard in Hammond”. The viaduct he is speaking of is, what later came to be known as, the 9-span Bridge. The old bridge on Indianapolis Blvd that used to traverse IHB’s Gibson Yard in Hammond. Woods claimed to have an old map that detailed as such.
This was an important argument to have. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was interested in writing a permanent account of the early history of the region. They talked to Harding and the Frobel location is the information he gave them. It is unknown how Woods got involved, honestly I didn’t look into that any further. I have no idea if the WPA ever wrote their account. The point is that it is possible that they both may be right.
Referencing the first pioneer quote about Gibson’s Inn:
“It stood about three hundred feet west of Gibson run, and was torn down in about 1869 or ’70. “
The important thing about this quote are the dates. I’ll explain why. From a historical write-up about one of Gibson Inn’s caretakers (which is an entirely different story altogether), a tragedy occurred to the inn May 19, 1871. That is the same year as the Great Chicago Fire, but some five months prior. Back then Michigan Central’s locomotives weren’t numbered, but named. Michigan Central had at least three named locomotives operating to Chicago. One of the locomotives was ‘Ruby’. Ruby is a fairly historic locomotive, pictured a dozen times. Those of us historians have seen Ruby at one point in time or another.
These early locos were wood-burning models. The coal-burning models would come later. As a result, the way they burned their wooden fuel caused their gigantic smokestacks to ‘spark’ when they were in motion. They weren’t actually sparks but burning wood embers. Sometimes the embers would fly further than they thought and set things on fire. Such is what happened at the inn that night in May 1871.
Embers from Ruby’s smokestack set Gibson’s Inn on fire. The Inn burned down to the ground. The fire destroyed everything. The Gibson’s were left with literally nothing. Fortunately for them, they had a great relationship with Michigan Central. The railroad company paid for their inn to be totally rebuilt! This is a rare show of compassion from a railroad company. In the early days, they were cutthroat and ruthless tacticians. This is how they became so successful. For them to pay to rebuild — AND offer man power to help with construction — that is an awesome thing to do.
However, nothing is said about the inn being rebuilt at the same spot. It is possible that when Gibson’s Inn was rebuilt, it was done in Hammond. When the settler says the inn was torn down in 1869–70, he’s not far off the mark at all. It was 1871. Yet he does not state how, why or where the inn was rebuilt. As I stated, it could be possible that Harding and Woods both may be right. OR… It could be possible that both Harding and Woods may be wrong. Like I said, it hasn’t been easy trying to crack this egg.
From the descriptions of Gibson’s Inn given in numerous accounts, it would seem that it was located relatively close to the Michigan Central tracks. That could place the inn in either Hammond or Gary. Some accounts state that the inn was north of the Michigan Central, which would throw the 14th & Madison location into question. However, as I have quoted here, there are vivid stories from numerous people that claim the inn was close to Gibson’s Run, which was in Gary and did run from the Tolleston area to Ambridge Park, where it emptied into the Grand Calumet River. And finally we have the town of Gibson, which is not in Gary but in Hammond.
Mrs. Henrietta Gibson says:
“…there were no houses, except the Gibson inn. We lived in a two-story house where the Tolleston station stands.”
“The inn was close to Gibson Run, a small creek, and there was another small stream near there.”
“The hotel was a good, two-story, hewn low building, which he built on the forty-acres. It faced east on the old wagon road about where Madison street is, near as I can remember. It was a little north-east of where the school building stands.” — Henrietta E. Gibson
Let’s break it down. Gibson’s Inn was two stories, and that is confirmed. Gibson’s Inn was close to the Gibson Run. That is stated numerous times. The inn did face east towards the wagon trail. The wagon trail is basically along the same path as the Michigan Central, but it’s not exact. Michigan Central largely paralleled the trail, with some spots being on the trail and some parts running adjacent. The wagon trail crossed the Michigan Central line at Tolleston, then continued west towards Hammond, at Hohman. Where the trail crossed the tracks, that’s where Gibson’s Inn was roughly located. This would mean the Inn being at Madison street was indeed misinterpreted, as Woods claimed. Yet Woods would also be wrong about the inn being located in Hammond. This is according to Henrietta that is — the woman who lived there.
There is another account from William Kunert, former superintendent of the Tolleston Gun Club, that claims the inn was located at “9th & Cleveland”. That is interesting because it would put it in the heart of old town Tolleston. It would be close to the Detroit-Chicago trail, north of the Michigan Central (which followed that trail), about a block northwest of Tolleston depot, put it very close to the description of the second branch of Gibson’s Run, and have it close enough to the Michigan Central for locomotive embers to fly and catch fire to it.
A line from Mary Vincent says:
“The Gibson house is the only building I remember of being where Gary is now. It was along the stage line. They used to run a stage from LaPorte to Chicago. “
To me, 9th & Cleveland/Tolleston Junction area seems the most plausible out of all the locations… at least for the original inn. It could be possible that it was rebuilt in Hammond at the location now known as Gibson. I haven’t seen anything to confirm that the inn was rebuilt in Hammond. I’ll get into the Hammond stuff in the next write-up, for it is heavy with history that I’m still researching. I think you’ll enjoy it greatly.
Of course, as I stated, this is a controversy. See, the thing about these pioneer accounts is this. The words read are basically an interpretation by the author of the book. You can’t see all the nuances of the language being used. You can’t read dialect or emphasis. These people are speaking like they talked, you have to keep that in mind. What you read may not be literally what they meant. What you understand it to be may be wrong if you are reading it as gospel. Humans are imperfect creatures. The book was published in 1922. The contributors were mostly — or all — in their elder years. Older people tend to jump around a lot from thought to thought, and if you’re not careful, you could interpret something they said wrongly.
Gibson is a famous pioneer name that many communities in northern Lake County try to claim for themselves. The Gibsons we know of hailed from New York and New Jersey. They migrated to Columbus, Ohio and settled there for a time. But before I continue with the Gibson’s I must make an important pitstop.
We travel to an old southern plantation. It is unknown where this plantation is, but I assume it’s Louisiana — for reasons I’m going to explain momentarily. Members of the Gibson family owned a plantation in the south. It is unknown if our Gibsons had anything to do with the plantation, but it would be safe to assume that they were aware of it. I have not done a deep investigation of the Gibson plantation. An unnamed slave woman carrying the last name ‘Gibson’ migrated to Columbus, Ohio from this plantation. I’m going to call her ‘Miss’ Gibson. In Columbus ‘Miss’ married a man possibly named Jeremiah, but his last name was certainly Burns. Jeremiah Burns was of mixed race — French and Native American. This is a tale-tale sign of someone being from Creole decent — thus the Louisiana hypothesis. It wasn’t stated if Jeremiah came to Columbus with ‘Miss’ Gibson, or if he was already present when she arrived. Anyway ‘Miss’ Gibson and Jeremiah married and bore many children, one of which was a girl they named Catherine.
KITTIE GIBSON
Catherine was light-skinned, but described as ‘swarthy’. Being that her father was French and Native American, and her mother — for all I could find — African-American, her complexion was something akin to a fair-skinned person with a dark tan. Some would call a swarthy complexion olive, or warm. She was a small framed girl with piercing black eyes (humans don’t have naturally black irises — black eyes are just an extremely dark shade of brown), an exotic shade of skin and was an excellent cook and hostess.
In 1828, when Catherine was 4 years old, she was ‘adopted’ by an elderly woman named Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ Gibson. Betsy was the sister of David, Thomas and William Gibson. By this point in time, David’s wife, name unknown, had died. It was stated that Betsy ‘adopted’ Catherine for David, being he was without help in the house. She would raise Catherine and train her as a homemaker. The stories don’t say if ‘Miss’ Gibson was an indentured servant for any of the Gibsons in Columbus. Perhaps ‘Miss’ gave Catherine to the Gibson’s in exchange for something. This is a murky mystery that will probably never be answered.
Catherine looked at Betsy as a mother-figure. Though technically an indentured servant, she grew up with other Gibson children and was seen as a part of the family. However she never learned to read. In spite of this impairment, Catherine grew up very well spoken, without most of the southern African-American dialect. In later years, white men would describe her vocal cadence as “musical”. When Catherine grew into her teen years she would shed her Burns surname for Gibson and preferred to be called “Kittie” instead of Catherine. Thus the moniker Kittie Gibson was born — which she would be referred as for the rest of her life.
PIONEERS
For some reason the Gibsons decided to leave Columbus and moved to Chicago in 1836. In 1837, when Kittie was 12, an event known as ‘The Panic of 1837’ occurred. This was a very severe economic depression. In 1838 Gibson’s Inn was founded in Lake County, Indiana. It is unknown if the founding of the inn was due to the panic or if it were already being finalized prior to. The panic caused the creation of something known as ‘The 1838 Preemption Act’, which allowed squatters from anywhere to claim up to 160 acres of western land by heads of families, widows and men over 21 for a period of four months. The Gibsons could have taken advantage of this, as many others did.
In any event the inn quickly became a favorite spot for stagecoach pilots to rest and catch a hot meal, as it sat along the ‘Old Sauk Trail’, better known as the Detroit-Chicago Trail. Kittie was a 13 year old black girl by then and included in the first permanent settlers of Lake County, Indiana. She would have witnessed the slow systematic depletion of Potawatomi and Miami natives, which started as soon as the white man arrived in Lake County to settle for good, around 1830. It was a careful dance between the government’s ability to pay annuities, treaties, trade relations and land speculators — and eventually forced removals. All of the early settlers were witness to this — if not directly involved with such efforts themselves in one way or another.
In 1841 Solomon Northup was kidnapped and sold into slavery. In 1853 he was freed and published 12 Years a Slave. Kittie was in Lake County, Indiana this entire time working at the inn. Northwest Indiana was largely rural compared to other communities sprouting up to its east. The dune lands, rivers and swamps held back development. If land was sold, it was sold very cheap. In 1850 the federal government passed the Swampland Act, which gave undesirable land back to the states. Indiana got 1,266,706 acres back, 111,400 acres in Lake County alone (1//3 of the entire county). Most of that land would end up being bought in bulk by speculators such as George W. Clarke, whose lands provided the foundation for Northwest Indiana’s industrial growth in the next century.
Yet it was the coming of the railroad that really changed the game. Chicago’s growth — and Lake County’s growth — solely depended on the railroad’s ability to build through the swamps. Fortunately the railroads were ravenously in competition with each other and hungry enough to achieve this feat. The first railroad to come through Lake County was Michigan Central. Michigan Central largely followed the Old Sauk Trail, which brought stagecoaches to places such as Gibson’s. For the longest time, Michigan Central’s final stop was at Gibson, where passengers would depart the train and take a stagecoach into Chicago. Even when the line was fully built, it was a little while before trains would regularly run all the way to Chicago during the winter months.
Gibson’s was a popular location for the railroad hands, providing shelter, hot meals and conversations with Kittie, the ‘half-breed Indian’. Kittie became very popular and was treated with the utmost respect as far as I could ascertain, with her cooking skills being the rave. In 1858 Pennsylvania Railroad had reached the area later to be known as Tolleston. It was that year when someone else would take residence at Gibson’s.
‘ILL’ WILL
William Darnell Davis was born to an aristocratic family in 1837 England. His name could have been spelled ‘Wilhelm’, for he was not a junior. His father, William Darnell Davis, was a career politician, spending his time between Grenada in the Caribbean West Indies and London. In 1840 the elder Davis was Attorney General of Grenada. By 1847 he was appointed by the Crown to be Chief Justice of Grenada. In that year he sent for his son, Wilhelm, to live with him in Grenada. Reports say that Wilhelm hated every second of his stay in Grenada. However father was apathetic to his son’s troubles. He figured the tropical sun would be better for him verses the dank and damp atmosphere of England.
As Wilhelm grew older his father trusted him with responsibilities such as overseeing the sharecroppers on his plantation. The sharecroppers were not slaves, for slavery had been completely outlawed in 1834. Instead the workers were imported Indians from India. Young Wilhelm’s task included working all day in the hot sun, insuring the workers were doing their jobs. Wilhelm despised this job, despised Grenada’s weather and longed to return to England.
Sometime before Wilhelm was 18, while in the middle of his duties, he suffered a sunstroke. They described it as being ‘sun sick’. We know it today as a heatstroke. It is unknown what type of treatment he received, but being the son of an aristocrat has its advantages. Young Wilhelm didn’t fare well after the incident. Heatstroke can cause vital organ damage if the response to the stroke isn’t fast enough. The brain can swell, as well as other organs. This can cause permanent damage.
Something happened to Wilhelm, because his recovery was botched. He developed what was described as ‘derangement’. This leads me to believe that Wilhelm suffered some sort of brain damage from the heatstroke. He also became blind in one eye. His father continued to put him in the fields, but Wilhelm would get sick over and over again. Not only was the father embarrassed about his son, but so was his mother, Agnes. They took unknown steps to hide their son’s ailments, but these measures failed. The constant state of illness, combined with unknown behavioral changes (more or less deranged) caused Papa Davis to seek to rid himself of his son. Papa Davis got into contact with some acquaintances of his in Chicago. These acquaintances knew of a law firm in Chicago that needed help filing papers. Wilhelm was sent to Chicago and put to work immediately.
Yet as time went by, the lawyers of the firm began to tire of Wilhelm’s ‘peculiarities’. They got back in contact with the acquaintances, who contacted Papa Davis. Papa Davis, still wanting nothing to do with his son, gave permission to put him anywhere they saw fit. So the acquaintances got in contact with some surveyors who worked with Michigan Central during their construction through Lake County. The surveyors thought about Gibson’s place. They got in contact with old man Gibson (probably Thomas). Gibson went to Chicago and returned with Wilhelm, known from now on as William Davis. Papa Davis payed the Gibsons $2 dollars a day for Wilhelm’s board.
As soon as William arrived at Gibson’s, Kittie became enamored with him. William was 21, she was 33. From day one, William was pretty much bullied by boarders who took residence in the inn and was treated as other by everyone else. William would rage about his plight, but Kittie would be there for him. She would listen to his rants, sooth his anger and over time William began to calm down. His rages subsided, though his ‘peculiarities’ remained. Kittie saw his differences as intriguing. Soon Kittie would be the only one William would say more than one word to. Weird William became a presence that was just as looked for as Kittie was, albeit for different reasons.
In 1863, at 26 years old, Wilhelm’s father died in his role as Chief Justice of Grenada. His mother Agnes would die in 1888 when he was 51. It is unknown if Wilhelm ever heard from anyone in his family again. My research show no record of Wilhelm mentioned in any capacity in the familial history of Chief Justice William Darnell Davis. Even after death, the $2 dollar a day payment was paid, up until 1901. By then all of the pioneer Gibsons were dead. Kittie would later say that Wilhelm never showed any inkling of desire to return to England or see his family. I think it would be safe to say that he was completely ostracized. Wilhelm had a younger brother named Nicholas Darnell, and a sister named Frances Elizabeth, who married the son of another Grenadian aristocrat — Henry Sharpe. Records show Nicholas went on to become a Grenadian aristocrat himself — what Wilhelm would have been had he not became sickly.
CABIN FEVER
Northern Lake County was described as a wet, jungle-swamp that was inhospitable, forsaken and worthless. Describing it this way makes it seem undesirable. This undesirableness is what caused the delay in Lake County’s economic development. In actuality, looking at it from a modern-day lens, northern Lake County was a gem. Bands of low-lying dunes formed ribbons miles and miles long around the shore of Lake Michigan, extending out to Ridge Road. Portions of these ribbons can still be seen today with aerial photography. In between each ribbon was a shallow sea, absolutely teaming with fish, fowl game, one-of-a-kind plant life, gigantic oak trees, hundreds of deer, fox, wolfs, hundreds of species of bird and the occasional black bear. Cutting through the ribbons were countless small streams — some fast moving like Gibson’s Run — other’s slow, thick and sluggish.
Then the crown of it all. Hundreds upon hundreds of acres of sand dunes lined Lake Michigan. Some towering 200 feet, especially in the Gary area. Huge forests grew next to the dunes, sometimes the dunes would ‘move’. The wind would shift the dunes inland, covering the forests with tons of sand. Dead limbs would stick up through the dunes, which in turn served as homes for wildlife. One could stand up on top of the highest dunes and have a view of the land and lake that was unmatched anywhere else. The Grand Calumet River flowed wild, tempting hunters and trappers with loads of beaver, ducks, geese, deer and whatever else. Surrounding the banks of the river were swamplands teaming with all sorts of wildlife. They would be 10–18 feet deep in most places. Some were walkable with the right gear, others were only accessible by boat.
Original dunes in Gary, Indiana. Artificially colored.
It wasn’t that hard-living here back then — at least compared with other western pioneer excursions. The game was plentiful. The waters were clear and clean. Berries of all sorts grew wild everywhere. The plenty didn’t die in the winter. Deer thrived — there are tales of 18 deer being killed by one man in one day. In the midst of all of it was Gibson’s Inn. Life at the inn was very busy. Kittie would take care of chores inside the house, and William would take care of outside. In the summer months William was pretty much useless, for he still got sun sick. The elder Gibsons would also work outside, except for Betsy, who people now called ‘Mother’ or ‘Ma’ Gibson. This ensemble was well known in the region.
Hundreds of different boarders, railroad workers and officials, land speculators, businessmen, trappers, stagecoach pilots and passengers would make use of the inn during these times. Of course Gibson’s place wasn’t the only stop along the stagecoach trail. There were other places such as Lake Station, Liverpool, Millers and Hohman. Crown Point was the only one that had a bit of a head-start with its growth as a town. It pretty much sat in the middle of a dry prairie, which made it fairly easy to cultivate and build up. Northern Lake County was the exact opposite. It was rough, rugged and soggy. The forests were concentrated and impenetrable. On a dry day traveling the trails wasn’t so bad, considering. Yet when the wet season came travel was hard-going.
Inns such as Gibsons were havens in the wilderness. Horses could rest, be fed and watered. Guests could eat a meal, purchase a room or conduct business. When the trains arrived, the inns were mini stations where goods were loaded and unloaded and provided weary travelers with a way to stretch their legs and get some shut-eye. All of them came away with nothing bad to say about Kittie Gibson.