Welcome to my blog about Philadelphia during World War One.* At least once a week, you will find a new post based on research I am doing for my book. The posts will be about something interesting I have found and/or questions I have about people and events in Philadelphia during the years 1914 to 1919. I intend to be as Philly-centric as I can manage, although, as my first question shows, the larger metropolitan area will sometimes be important.
Dr. John Heysham Gibbon (1871-1956) was a graduate of Jefferson Medical College. He was a professor of surgery at Jefferson and held a number of surgical appointments. There were physicians in the family going back several generations. His brother Robert was also a physician, as was John’s son, also named John, who became internationally famous for inventing the heart-lung machine.
There were also military men in the family. Dr. Gibbon’s uncle, General John Gibbon, was a leading Union commander during the Civil War and one of the commanders on the western frontier afterward. Dr. Gibbon himself served during the Spanish American War. He also married the daughter of Lt. General Samuel Baldwin Marks Young, one of the leading generals of that period.
Dr. Gibbon served in World War One with Pennsylvania Base Hospital #10, as a consulting surgeon to the Fourth Corps, and ended the war as Surgical Consultant to the American Hospitals in England. He also spent some time (Oct.-Dec. 1917) at a British Casualty Clearing Station at Poperinghe during the last phases of the Battle of Passchendaele, his posting closest to the fighting.
The Gibbon family had a residence at 1608 Spruce Street and owned a farm in Delaware County. The family spent a lot of time at Lynfield Farm, which Dr.Gibbon had purchased some time prior to the war. The farm is noted as being on Providence Road and was likely located close to Media.
I would like to know where exactly the farm was located and what is there today.
(*The header image, “You, Help My Boy Win the War” is from the George F. Tyler Poster Collection. Special Collections Research Center. Temple University Libraries. Philadelphia, PA, 19122.)