William Gibson: a photographer of 1860, on both sides of the city line

1860–1867 — Mishawaka rooms, then a South Bend gallery

The career: William Gibson learned photography in 1860 — so his sketch in Chapman's 1880 county history says, at pages 915–916; the sketch does not name the town where he learned, a gap the Indiana Photographers Project itself flags, though the biographies around his are South Bend men. His first documented rooms are across the city line: in 1863 he was working in Mishawaka, over H. D. Higgins's jewelry store — a Mishawaka fact, printed here as a boundary line because the career crosses into this city's record four years later. Holland's South Bend directory of 1867 lists Gibson's gallery on the east side of Michigan Street between Washington and Market, one of only two "Photograph Galleries" the directory's classified heading carries that year, McDonald's being the other. Gibson's span — trained in the ambrotype year of 1860, gallery-keeping in two cities through the carte-de-visite decade — is the itinerant-to-settled arc of the trade's first generation, and the record's honesty about his sketch is worth keeping: the town of his training is not stated, and this section does not state it either.

Sources:

1. Charles C. Chapman & Co., History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1880), pp. 915–916 — the Gibson sketch: learned photography in 1860; the town unnamed, as the Indiana Photographers Project's notes observe.
2. Indiana Album / Indiana Photographers Project, PersonData record for William Gibson (indianaalbum.com) — the 1863 Mishawaka rooms over H. D. Higgins's jewelry store.
3. Holland's South Bend Directory (1867) — Gibson's gallery, east side of Michigan between Washington and Market, under the "Photograph Galleries" heading, as cited in the project's notes from the South Bend Area Genealogical Society list.