Thomas Gibbons

Thomas Gibbons (December 15, 1757 – May 16, 1826) was a planter, politician, lawyer, steamboat owner and the plaintiff in Gibbons vs. Ogden.

Early life Gibbons was born at Mulberry Hill, his family's plantation outside of Savannah, Georgia, on December 15, 1757. Between 1752 and 1762, his father acquired several thousand acres between the Ogeechee and Savannah Rivers where he operated a saw mill, grew rice, and owned over 100 slaves. In addition to his service as mayor, he was also an alderman of the city. In 1801, he was appointed a federal judge.

Move to New Jersey and letter to Senator Johnathan Dayton

In 1801, Gibbons moved north and purchased a summer house in Elizabethtown in New Jersey,

In December 1802 Gibbons wrote a letter to Johnathan Dayton, who then served as U.S. Senator from New Jersey, which in part asserted that the sexual liaison between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings was a reality. The letter revealed the names of all of Hemings’ three children, who were alive at the time, and some other information, that newspaper accounts of the day did not reveal. The Gibbons letter had no known impact during Jefferson’s Presidency and was not known to participants in the controversy until the 1990s. Jefferson historians dropped their denial of the sexual liaison very soon after historian Joseph Ellis and others dumped a DNA report into national print and broadcast media without the foreknowledge of the DNA testing organizer, Dr. Eugene Foster.

Gibbons enters the steamboat business

Gibbons formed a partnership with Ogden, to operate steamboats. In 1817 Gibbons acquired a steam ferry, the Stoudinger, built by Allaire Iron Works, as a Hudson River ferry business between Elizabethtown and New Brunswick, New Jersey. In 1818, he acquired Bellona. Gibbons hired Cornelius Vanderbilt to captain the Bellona.

In 1820, six years before his death, Gibbons had built, by William, what is today known as the Thomas Gibbons Range, in Savannah's Ellis Square. He had owned the lot since 1809.

Personal life In 1780, Gibbons was married to Ann Miles Heyward (1757–1820). Ann Heyward Gibbons (1790–1817), who married John Trumbull (1784–1859), son of Gov. Joseph Trumbull. who built the Gibbons Mansion in Madison, New Jersey, and married Abigail Louisa Taintor (1791–1844). Thomas Heyward Gibbons (1795–1825), who married Mary Dayton, daughter of U.S. Senator and Speaker of the House Jonathan Dayton.

Gibbons died on May 16, 1826, in New York. He was "obese and diabetic from a life of rapacious eating and drinking." However, due to Gibbon's falling out with his son-in-law, no child of John Trumbull was able to inherit any piece of Gibbon's estate or property as dictated in Gibbons' scathing will.