Gibbs, Jonathan C.

Jonathan C. Gibbs, born in New York in 1840, was orphaned at a young age and compelled to support himself as a manual farm laborer starting at age ten. After moving to Illinois, marrying Elizabeth McGibbons, and briefly serving in the Union Army during the Civil War, he moved his family west to Missouri and then San Francisco. In 1891, he relocated to Fresno County with only eighty-five cents to his name, but through tireless energy and strict economy, he saved enough to buy a fifty-acre ranch by 1898.

Under his direction, the raw property was transformed into an exceptionally productive raisin vineyard valued at $50,000. He raised a large family of seven surviving children, though he suffered the loss of his devoted wife in July 1908. A Progressive Republican and an active member of the California Raisin Growers’ Association, Gibbs remained one of the region’s most resilient and well-liked pioneers while recovering from a severe hip injury sustained in 1918.