Rebecca Gibson Delaney (b. circa 1792 – d. 1847)
MSA SC 5496-51356
Maryland State Colonization Society Emigrant to Liberia from Talbot
County, 1835
Biography:
Rebecca Gibson was a free resident of Talbot County. She emigrated from Maryland to Liberia with her husband Jacob, children Joseph, Henry, Samuel, Garrison, Mary Ann and Louisa, and niece Ellen Gibson.1 The Gibson family departed from Baltimore on the schooner Harmony on June 28, 1835 and arrived at Cape Palmas, Liberia on August 23, 1835.2 Despite emigrating with so many family members, Jacob Gibson also left some of his children behind in slavery.3 It is not clear if the children left behind were also Rebecca's children.
In 1836, Jacob died suddenly. On January 19, 1837, Rebecca married William Delaney (or Dulaney), a carpenter with a young son, also named William.4, 5 William Delaney does not appear in the record after 1838, and by 1840, Rebecca is listed in the census as a widow again.6 The William Gibson listed as her child on the 1843 census is probably her step-son William as there is no record that Rebecca and Jacob ever had a son named William.7
The census records never recorded an occupation for Rebecca so it is likely that she did not work outside of the home. However, on the agricultural census of 1839, she was recorded as cultivating three-quarter of an acre of land, possibly as food for her family.8 Rebecca died of unrecorded causes in 1847.9 Probably because of her death, the young William Delaney then joined the household of Thomas Brown.10
2. Hall, Richard L. On Afric’s Shore: A History of Maryland in Liberia, 1834-1857. (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 2003), 450.
3. Ibid, 109.
4. Maryland Colonization Journal, September 1837, Vol. 1, No.12, p. 52.
7. SPECIAL COLLECTIONS (Papers of the Maryland State Colonization Society), Subscribers Reports Census, 1817-1902, MSA SC 5977, Film Number M 13247-1, 1843a Census.1843b.
8. Hall, 450.
9. Ibid.
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