Gibson celebrates 100th birthday

By Rose Hooper

The youngest of six children born to York and Mary Liner Howell, she credits her long life to faith in God, a strong will and being of pioneer stock.

She remembers her father and grandfather operating the water-powered wheat and corn mill on Richland Creek. Originally from Haywood County, her family moved in 1906 to the Olivet section of Jackson County, where they farmed and operated a sawmill.

Children of her day helped with the farm chores, she said, adding, "I could harness a horse and put it to the buggy as good as any man."

Fairs were a big attraction in her young years. She tells of going to the Cherokee Indian Fair in a buggy when there was no bridge over the river in Cherokee.

"The water was half way up on the buggy wheels," she said. "There were few bridges over streams back then and people walking used foot logs.

Gibson liked to ride the train that went from Wilmot to Sylva and sometimes Waynesville when Southern Railway operated four passenger trains daily, with two going east and two going west, she said.

Born the year the Wright Brothers made their first airplane flight, Gibson she can remember the first plane that flew over Jackson County.

She also remembers the horrible news of the Titanic sinking in 1912 and the terrible flu epidemic of 1918-1919 when the Whittier area had only one doctor, Dr. Harold Tidmarsh, who rode horseback from home to home. He carried a set of wire cutters in his saddle bags, and if the distance to the next home was closer through a cow pasture, he cut the wire and went through. Nobody complained, she said.

Everybody farmed and when the crops were made, families loaded up wagons and headed to Soco Gap for a picnic and overnight camping.

In 1925 she married Oscar Gibson and they made their home on Camp Creek on land that had been in the family since before the Civil War. She attended Shoal Creek Baptist Church, where she is the oldest member in both age and membership.

According to her son, Gene, "She can making anything out of cloth with her pedal sewing machine." She crocheted up until a year ago.

Her husband died in 1969 and she lived with their only son until poor health required professional care. She has three grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.

"Sometimes she gets confused when I go and visit her and she will ask me, 'Did you ride the horse, or come in a buggy?'" Gene said.