GIBSON PLACE

Reservoir No. 2 - Lake Ellerslie, Lexington, Fayette County, Kentucky
Built about 1800

Source: Old Houses of Lexington, C. Frank Dunn, typescript, n.d., copy located in the Kentucky Room, Lexington (Kentucky) Public Library.

There are several of the elder generation who, if asked about this fine old house overlooking Reservoir No. 2, would reply promptly: "That's the Gibson house."

However, they are hardly aware of the fact that the same answer would have been made nearly 125 years ago, and that's going back a long ways.

William Gibson, who built the house, bought 200 acres here in November, 1791, from Thos. Poague and wife, Agnes, of Augusta County, Va.

Gibson paid £50 for "a certain tract in the County of Fayette, District of Kentucky, on the waters of the West fork of Hickman Creek, being the south-east end of a settlement right granted Thos. Poage, assignee of Robert, by patent bearing date of April 1, 1785."

In December, 1816, Wm. Gibson deeded to his son, James, for "natural love and affection," the south-east half of his 1791 purchase. It was described as "all that tract situated whereon James Gibson now resides and lives, being the part of the tract of land whereon I, the said Wm. Gibson, now live." It contained 100 acres "on the north side of West Hickman" and cornered on Tod's old tenement."

The Gibson heirs, in a partition of property in 1864, cut this tract down to 53 acres, cornering on "William Preston," and gave it to John Gibson. The next deed was from Thos. M. Gibson to C.C. Gibson in 1872.

Columbus C. Gibson, in his will (prob. 1891) authorized his executors to sell his farm, "known as the Bell Place, touching on the Mt. Tabor Road," and devised "my home place to my sister, Ann Gibson, a single woman."

Mary Ann Gibson died in 1898 and willed her property one-third each to nephew Samuel B. Downing; to brother, John E. Gibson, and to nephews and nieces of her sister, Elizabeth Downing, and brother, Thomas (dec'd).

Transcribed pb November 2005