Dr. William Gibson, a physician, entrepreneur and world traveler, built his Italianate-Victorian style residential mansion in 1856. Dr. Gibson was instrumental in establishing the Pittsburgh Lake Erie Railroad in Jamestown PA. He founded Jamestown Banking company in 1874, secured Jamestown Seminary charter of 1858 and built a business block across the street where the buildings once housed his Mica Plant and an Opera House
A few years after the Civil War was over and slavery was abolished, on a transatlantic cruise in 1867, Dr and Mrs. Gibson met one of the most famous abolitionists and writers of that era, Samuel Clemens (pen name Mark Twain) who traveled through Mercer County lecturing in the 1860’s to the 1920’s and who was photographed outside the Presbyterian Church in Jamestown PA after one of his lectures in Sharon, PA. We believe that even though Samuel Clemens showed disdain for most people, he did stay at the Manor as Dr and Mrs. Gibson’s guest one night and was a prolific anti-slavery author and lecturer after the War. We believe if Dr Gibson was even remotely pro-slavery, Mr. Clemens would not have stayed with him.
The Underground Railroad, and especially from 1850 to the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 was so secretive and put so many lives in danger…the fugitive slaves, the freed slaves and the stationmasters who helped them, that virtually nothing was written down for fear records could be traced to a slave or their family still in the South. Since the Gibson’s did not have children, their great works of humanity are sadly not documented. But families who settled in Jamestown have been able to help us form The Friends of the Manor Charitable Fund and Trust to preserve the Manor Carriage House and Mansion and verify the tunnels, the chains, the hiding places inside the house and the fact that Dr Gibson built a perfect escape route for slaves on and around his property to use the rivers and jump trains to Meadville, New York and eventually to Canada, which was outside the boundaries of the laws in the US….where they could be safe.
There are many tales of ghosts who haunt these rooms. One being of a woman named Victoria. She was to be married in the Gibson House but on her way a horrible storm ensued. Thunder spooked her horses, overturning the carriage she traveled in. She died that day never making it to her planned wedding. It is said that during stormy nights, strange things happen in the Gibson House. And the tale is that smelling the scent of lavender is a sign that she is still present here in the house
Throughout the year we have Underground Railroad tours to learn more about slavery and the end of slavery. We also offer candlelight ghost tours in October to learn more about the haunting of the Gibson House.