Born in Harrisonburg Virginia to John and Elizabeth Keffer Gibbons on September 9, 1822, Gibbons went to both Dickinson Grammar School and Dickinson College.[1] During his years at Dickinson Gibbons performed well academically and received relatively few demerits in the system of the day.[2] At that time, Dickinson, along with other institutions of higher learning were much different than academic institutions of today. During their four years at Dickinson, students had a set class schedule for every year and took classes from the faculty of less than ten members through the 30s and 40s. The standard college curriculum in that era was not constructed with majors or concentrations; rather there was only one degree offered.[3] In fact the college archives has part of the standard senior coursework produced by Gibbons. As part of the senior year religion coursework, every student was required to do an analysis of Joseph Butler’s The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature. [4]

In addition to the differences in academics the college was also religiously affiliated at the time Gibbons attended and graduated. In 1833 the College had begun an affiliation with the Baltimore and Philadelphia conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church after its Presbyterian affiliation and the college itself had gone into decline.[5] This was a somewhat complex merging in part because the Methodist movement was somewhat opposed to higher learning during that era. In his Dickinson College: a History George Reed describes the attitudes of the Methodist church towards higher education and how this kept Dickinson’s board from coming under direct control of the Baltimore conference.[6] This did not mean that the board was unchanged however, and the Methodist Church had a good deal of interest in the college for many years after. It is probable but not proven that the affiliation of Dickinson played a part in the path Gibbons took, either he was already a strong Methodist and chose Dickinson due to the link or his college experiences and contacts helped lead him to the Baltimore conference.

The Relationship of Dickinson College with the Baltimore conference appears to have also had some effect on the Methodist Episcopal Church. Reed argues that, “John McClintock and George R. Crooks [faculty members] were on the other hand profoundly concerned [with the College’s religious sponsorship] and would profoundly influence the Church’s new intellectualism.”[7] Methodism was a relatively new brand of Christianity that originated in England with the preaching of John Wesley. It used classes and a simple step by step process to bring its adherents to God, Methodism’s practice and spread was also marked by itinerate preachers who traveled circuits rather than having a single parish or church.[8]

The Baltimore conference of the Methodist Church had been the forerunner of conferences as governing bodies. In the words of William Sweet, “The organizing conference at Baltimore was a new kind of Methodist conference. It was not an advisory body and had been called into being to determine what course Methodism was to take in an independent America. It decided all matters by majority vote; thus was introduced the governing conference into the American Methodist system.”[9] This governing function of the conference as an institution dominated American Methodism and allowed the particular form of sponsorship that benefited Dickinson College so it seems apt that the Baltimore Conference took the initiative in partnering with the college.

After graduating from Dickinson in 1846, Gibbons went to the University of Maryland and in 1849 he received his Masters degree and became a member and clergyman of the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The Methodist Episcopal Church was one denomination of the then fractured adherents to the teachings and methods of John Wesley. In 1844 the Methodist Episcopal Church met at a general conference in New York and as the result of differences upon the issue of slavery and the role of bishops in governing the Church. The Southern Church split off and become another of the fragmented elements of American Methodism, which had already split in 1830 and 1843 over issues surrounding the power structure of the church.[10]

In 1852 Gibbons’s life changed in two significant ways. On March 28 he married Sarah E. Cloud of Front Royal Virginia.[11] It is possible that they met in Baltimore but seems more likely that they met through family connections due to the relative proximity of Harrisonburg and Front Royal. Their marriage resulted in seven children whose names were John Mordecai, Mary Virginia, Edward Cloud, Annie Cloud, Mabel Rebecca, Arthur Saxe, and Edith Elizabeth.[12] Although dates were not given for the children it is reasonable to assume that they were all probably born in the 20 years following Alexander and Sarah’s Marriage.

The second momentous change of 1852 was Gibbons’ move to California as a missionary in the Methodist Episcopal Church.[13] The timing of this move is worth noting, not only is it the same year as his marriage, it is just three years after the gold rush of 1849 and four years after the commencement of missionary activity by the Church. As a missionary in a newly established field there must have been peculiar challenges even as a domestic missionary.

The Methodist Church’s organized missions movement had its roots in the formation of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1819. The original focus of missions work was with the Indians and by 1828 there were eleven missions among the Indians of Canada and the United States.[14] In 1848 the territories of California and Oregon were a focus of the Church and the Oregon and California Mission Conference was formed and the first missionaries arrive in California in early 1849.[15] It can be imagined that the territory of California was a demanding field for missionaries. It included a great number of rough miners and wanderers and increasingly large populations of immigrant Chinese. In a chapter entitled “Gold” Gertrude Atherton provides some general information about the rough nature of the gold mines and the hard men that worked them.[16]

After spending two years as a missionary, Gibbons took a position on the faculty of what was founded as California Wesleyan College and later changed to University of the Pacific near San Jose.[17] After three years Gibbons became President of the college, a position he held from 1857-60 and, after a break in which he taught at Ohio State University, again from 1872-78.[18] This new institution was part of the growth in Methodist education and the creation of educated laymen and ministers.[19]

After his retirement from the college presidency, it seems that Gibbons functioned as a pastor in the California conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and in 1902 he took a position as superintendent of Arizona missions.[20] It is unsure when he finally retired from ministry but by the time the 1808 Catalog of Living Alumni was published Gibbons was residing in Pacific Grove California, so it seems reasonable to assume that by that point he was no longer the superintendent off Arizona missions although it is conceivable that the office was run out of California.[21]

Alexander Severus Gibbons led a life of some significance in the second half of the 19th century. While he never achieved historical prominence on a grand scale he was part of a significant religious movement and community in the form of the Methodist Episcopal Church. After graduating from the then Methodist affiliated Dickinson College he continued the connection with the Baltimore conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and following his graduate degree became a member and clergyman in the vibrant denomination and was soon functioning as a part of its expansive nature. As a missionary in California he was part of a greater movement in the American Methodist Church and it seems that his education and ability in the new mission field of California in some way distinguished him and he was soon part of the growing Methodist educational establishment. His later career as a college professor and president continued his ties to the Church in keeping with the general form of higher education associated with religious denominations. The common thread through his life from his college years until after the turn of the century was his active involvement in the Methodist Episcopal Church; he served as a missionary, a pastor, a college president and professor, and a missions administrator.

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Endnotes

[1] George Leffingwell Reed, ed., Alumni Record Dickinson College, 1905 (Carlisle, 1905), 122

[2] Class of 1846. Senior Grades (Carlisle, 1846)

General Record of the Standing of the Students for Each Term in Each Department.1844-57 (Carlisle, 1857)

[3] Dickinson College Register for the Academical Year 1845-6 (Carlisle, 1845)

[4] Dickinson College Register for the Academical Year 1845-6 (Carlisle, 1845)

[5] Charles Sellers, Dickinson College: A History (Middletown, 1973) 196

[6] Sellers, 201

[7] Sellers, 207

[8] William Warren Sweet, The Methodists: A Collection of Source Materials, vol.4 of Religion on the American Frontier, 1783-1840 (Chicago, 1946) 43-47

[9] William Warren Sweet, The Methodists: A Collection of Source Materials, vol.4 of Religion on the American Frontier, 1783-1840 (Chicago, 1946) 38

[10] Emory Stevens Bucke, The History of American Methodism, Vol. 2 (New York, 1964) 83-85

[11] Reed 1905, 122

[12] Reed 1905, 122

[13] Reed 1905, 122

[14] William Warren Sweet, Methodism in American History (New York, 1953) 195

[15] Sweet, Methodism in American History, 269

[16] Gertrude Atherton, California; an Intimate History (New York and London, 1914) 116-129

[17] Reed 1905, 122 and

Sweet, Methodism in American History, 270

[18] Reed 1905, 122

[19] Sweet, Methodism in American History, 224

[20] Reed 1905, 122

[21] George Leffingwell Reed, ed., Dickinson College Bulletin: Catalog of Living Alumni 1908 (Carlisle, 1908)

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Atherton, Gertrude Franklin Horn. California; an Intimate History. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1914.

Bucke, Emory Stevens. The History of American Methodism, Vol. 2. New York: Abingdon Press, 1964.

Butler, Joseph. The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature. 20th ed. New York: Mark H. Newman & Co., 1848.

Buckley, Joseph M. A History of Methodism in the United States, Vol. 1&2. New York: Harper & Brothers: 1898.

Buckingham, James Silk. The Eastern and Western States of America. London and Paris: Fisher, Son & Co., 1842.

Class of 1846. Senior Grades. Archives and Special Collections: Dickinson College, Carlisle PA. 1846.

Coe, Carl Robert. “Dr. William Gwynn Coe of the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church.” Maryland Historical Magazine 85, no.3 (1990): 277-287.

Cole, Charles E. “‘Humble Missionary’: Charles Maclay in California, 1851-1890.” Methodist History 35, no. 1 (1996): 3-13.

Dickinson College Register for the Academical Year 1845-6. Archives and Special Collections: Dickinson College, Carlisle PA. 1845.

General Record of the Standing of the Students for Each Term in Each Department.1844-57. Archives and Special Collections: Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA.

Gibbons, A. S. “Analysis of Butler's Analogy of Religion to the Constitution and Course of Nature.” Archives and Special Collections: Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA. 1846.

Gorrie, P. Douglass. Episcopal Methodism, As it Was, and Is; or, An Account of the Origin, Progress, Doctrines, Church Polity, Usages, Institutions, and Statistics, of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. Auburn and Buffalo: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1854.

Hunt, Rockwell. History of the College of the Pacific, 1851-1951;written in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of its founding. Stockton, CA: College of the Pacific, 1951.

Marsden, George M. & Bradley J. Longfield, eds. The Secularization of the Academy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Methodist Episcopal Church, California Annual Conference. Official Minutes of the Sixt