Born: 1836 (circa), United States
Died: 4 February 1890
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
Isabella Gibbons was enslaved by a University of Virginia professor, William Barton Rogers (later founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in the 1850s and 1860s. She served as a cook in his home, where his wife apparently taught Gibbons to read, and she became a teacher after being freed in 1865. She married Williams Gibbons, who was also enslaved by a university professor, in the early 1850s and the couple went on to have four children.
After Rogers was replaced in his role, Gibbons continued as a cook for his successor, and later worked as a nurse at the university’s Confederate military hospital. The Gibbons family were freed when Union troops reached Charlottesville on 3 March 1865. Gibbons studied at, and then began teaching at, the Freedmen’s School. A newspaper reported at the time that “Although the mother of several children, whom she must aid in supporting, she wishes to perfect her own education and become a teacher of her people. She is doubly precious to our hearts, as the devoted nurse of one of the noblest and best-beloved of our young officers, who died a prisoner in rebel hands.”
In 2015, the University of Virginia named a new residence hall Gibbons House, with information about the couple on public display, and she is featured on the university’s Memorial to Enslaved Laborers.