Crandall Times
Special Edition - 1905

    Mr. J W W Gibbs, "Uncle Billy" as he is affectionately called by his friends and that includes everyone who knows him, is a perfect store house of remeniscences of the early days of Texas when the white people were first trying to establish homes and wrench the land from the hands of the savages and their no less cruel and desperate allies, the border outlaws.

    Mr. Gibbs was born in Perry County Tenn., August 22^nd 1831, and while still quite a boy in December 1846, came to Texas.  Mr. Gibbs was a member of the famous Mercer Colony, the members of which were the first white settlers to make permanent homes along the East Fork of the Trinity River.

    Mercer, the founder of the colony, was in consideration of settling a large number of families in this section, to receive a large land grant while the settlers were to receive what was virtually free homes.  If one could imagine what the country then was with it's miles of prairie grass, dotted here and there with "motts" of timber and the plains full of wild horses, buffalo and deer, the sight was a grand one.

    Mrs. M A Gibbs, wife of J W W Gibbs, was born in Northboro, Massachusetts, Dec. 14^th 1831.  She came out to Texas in 1847, and was married to Mr. Gibbs August 11^th 1853, the license for their marriage being the seventeenth issued by the authorities of Kaufman County.

    Mr. Gibbs in relating incidents in the lives of the early settlers, tells of many thrilling experiences, by flood and field that make the heart bound and the pulse thrill, had we the space many of them we would gladly tell.

    When he came to the county there were neither churches nor schools.  There being no mills the settlers ground corn on steel hand mills for bread.  Salt was another scarce article.  Except meat and bread, the meat they killed on the prairie in the shape of game, and the corn they raised for bread, there was not a thing in the way of provisions that the colonists could buy nearer than Little Rock, Arkansas.  The women, as usual, were the main stay of the colony, always encouraging the men and helping the weak.

    Mr. & Mrs. Gibbs have raised a family and now in their old age are loved and venerated by all.  It may truly be said of them that they are "respected pioneers".