George Gibbs II (1735-1803) was a prosperous shipping merchant in Rhode Island in partnership with his brother-in-law, William Channing. Their fleet of trading vessels sailed to all parts of the world from the West Indies to China, Russia, and the Mediterranean, and at his death Gibbs left a fortune valued at $700,000.
His eldest son, George III, was born at Newport in 1776 and was sent to China at the age of twenty in the expectation that he would succeed his father in business. However, he was more attracted by travel and intellectual pursuits, especially mineralogy. In Europe he began gathering a large collection of mineral specimens, which he eventually sold to Yale University for $20,000. In 1810 he married Laura Wolcott, the fifteen-year old daughter of Oliver Wolcott, the secretary of the treasury during the administrations of Washington and John Adams. They had four sons, George IV (1825-1873), Oliver Wolcott (1822-1908), Alfred (1823-1868), and Francis Sarason (1831-1882) and three daughters, one who died in infancy, Elizabeth Wolcott (1819-1906), and Laura Wolcott (1827-1908).
Two of the boys followed the scientific bent of their father. George IV was educated at Round Hill School at Northampton, Massachusetts under the direction of George Bancroft, the historian, and Joseph S. Cogswell. Unsuccessful at entering West Point because of his family's Whig political affiliation during a period of Democratic ascendancy, Gibbs studied law at Harvard and began practice in New York City. However, he abandoned the profession to become librarian of the New York Historical Society from 1842 to 1848. Eager to see the West, particularly after the news of the gold rush of 1848, Gibbs accompanied the Mounted Rifle Regiment from St. Louis to Oregon in 1849. During the next few years he unsuccessfully speculated in land and prospected, but his main interests were studying the local Indians and mapping the topography and geology of parts of the Northwest. In December 1852, he was appointed collector of the Port of Astoria, a post which he held until April 1853, when a Democratic administration resulted in new federal appointments. George IV was also attached to the Northwest Boundary Commission as a geologist, and he served under Captain George B. McClellan, commander of the Western Division of the Northern Pacific Railroad Expedition which surveyed the Cascade Mountains and the Olympic Peninsula. In 1857 he became a member of the Boundary Commission, remaining in Washington Territory until 1860 when he returned to Washington, D.C. to become secretary of the Hudson Bay Commission. During the Civil War his health prevented active military service, but he spent much of his time in the capital, where he was connected with the Smithsonian Institute, which published a number of his ethnological reports and studies.
Oliver Wolcott Gibbs (usually referred to as Wolcott Gibbs) was an even more celebrated scientist than his older brother. Although a graduate of Columbia and the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Wolcott Gibbs did not intend to practice medicine, but instead was primarily interested in a career in chemistry and physics research. In 1845 he went to the University of Berlin to study in the laboratories of Heinrich Rose and Carl Rammelsberg. A year later he went to Giessen to study organic chemistry under Liebig. From there he journeyed to Paris, and by the time he returned to the United States in 1857 he was well-schooled in the best scientific theory of his day. After a year lectureship at the College of Physicians and Surgeons and at Delaware College in Newark, Delaware, he became professor of chemistry at the newly-founded Free Academy (now the College of the City of New York). In 1862 he became professor of chemistry and physics at Harvard. He remained there until his retirement in 1887. In his private laboratory at Newport he carried on research for another ten years, and during his long career he made many notable advances in physical chemistry, inorganic compounds, and analytical methodology.
Of the other sons of George Gibbs III, Alfred graduated from West Point and served as an officer in the Mexican and Civil wars before his death at Fort Leavenworth. Francis engaged in business, primarily in the grain export trade. George Gibbs V, the son of Francis, had a distinguished career as an electrical engineer and inventor.
Further information about the Gibbs Family may be found in The Gibbs Family of Rhode Island.
