Chasing Shadows: Gibson Road family rooted In agriculture by Pam Richardson Guest Columnist Our local farmers markets and residents would jump for joy if it were possible to bring Apalachicola plantsman Thomas Cameron Gibson back among us. We are accustomed to thinking that the forward march of time brings progress, but in some cases people were better off in the past, and this is certainly true in regard to the availability of locally cultivated produce in the Apalachicola area. Thomas was born in 1857 in Long Cane (near LaGrange), Georgia, one of nine children of Osbourn and Amarintha (“Minnie”) Gibson. A decade later, the Gibson family were living in the north Alabama boomtown of Bluffton where Osbourn worked first as wholesale grocer and then as a farmer. Something, however, led them to move again, this time to Apalachicola where, after Osbourn’s death in 1884, Thomas followed in his father’s footsteps and established himself as a farmer – and an extraordinary one at that.