William Gibson: the first rooms, 1863

1863–1864 — Mishawaka; afterward South Bend and Warsaw

The county list's first name is Mishawaka's: William Gibson was born in Ohio in 1836 and learned photography in 1860. In 1863 he opened rooms in Mishawaka over H. D. Higgins' Jewelry Store, the Mishawaka Enterprise recording the fact; the Indiana State Gazetteer for 1864–65 places him on Main Street, Mishawaka. He is the first photographer the record gives this city, and his Mishawaka tenancy is short: by 1867 a South Bend directory carries his gallery on the east side of Michigan Street between Washington and Market, and in July 1867 the Northern Indianian recorded his hiring by the B. Q. Morris Gallery of Warsaw, where the 1870 census finds him, occupation photographer. His later course belongs to South Bend's fragment, where he stands in the pioneer line; what is Mishawaka's is the opening — a working gallery in the village in the middle of the Civil War, above a jeweler's store, kept by a man who had learned the trade three years before. No Gibson image of Mishawaka is identified in the records reached.

Sources:

1. Indiana Album / Indiana Photographers Project, PersonData CATNUM 155 (William Gibson) — born Ohio 1836; learned photography 1860 (Chapman, History of St. Joseph County, 1880, pp. 915–916); Mishawaka 1863, rooms over H. D. Higgins Jewelry Store (Mishawaka Enterprise); Main Street, Mishawaka, 1864 (1864–65 Indiana State Gazetteer, p. 410); South Bend 1867 (Holland's directory); hired by B. Q. Morris Gallery, Warsaw, July 1867 (Northern Indianian); 1870 census, Warsaw, photographer.
2. Cross-reference: South Bend build, Photographers — Gibson's South Bend years, printed there in one boundary line and given their course here only for the Mishawaka opening.