GIBSON, Tobias, pioneer, born in Liberty, South Carolina, 10 November, 1771; died in Natchez, Tennessee, 10 April, 1804. Nothing can be learned of the history of his early years; in 1792 he entered the itinerant ministry of the Methodist Church, traveled and preached throughout the most important districts of the Carolinas, and in 1800 went to Natchez as a missionary. After penetrating the forest alone, for six hundred miles, he reached the Cumberland River, took a canoe and paddled himself eight hundred miles from that stream to the Ohio, and thence down the Mississippi. He made four trips while a missionary, through the wilderness, to the Cumberland, and laid the foundations of Methodism in the southwest. He continued alone upon this station till 1803, when, in a dying condition, he presented himself before the western conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and asked for further aid in the prosecution of his work. The council responded favorably to this application, and sent other missionaries to his assistance. His early death was the result of privation and exposure.