Person:Manomas Gibson (1)

!Personal History Interview with Manomas Lavina Gibson Andrus, St. George,

Utah, by Mabel Jarvis, interview in behalf of the Utah Historic Records Survey
of Washington County, Utah, 1936. (Note that her middle name is spelled
"Lavinia" in the title of the interview, but "Lavina" throughout the ensuing
text.)

!Information also derived from Washington County Library (M270.07, Andrus), St.

George, Utah.

!This interview records that Manomas was the tenth of eleven children of George

Washington Gibson and Mary Ann Sparks.

!Manomas's parents and family joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day

Saints in Mississippi in 1846 or early 1847, when she was four years old.
She was one of seventeen persons in a group of new converts from Mississippi
who joined the pioneers at Ft. Laramie on June 16, 1847.  They had wintered at
Pueblo, Colorado with some of Captain Brown's detachment of the Mormon
Battalion.  They eventually entered the Salt Lake Valley on July 29, 1847.

!Was Manomas was 15 years old, her father took a second wife in polygamy: Anne

Elizabeth Newman, who was also fiften years old at the time.  Apparently quite
a few problems arose between the Gibson children (there were eleven; Manomas
was the tenth) and their father's new young wife until they learned to adjust
to the situation.  Resulting from this experience, Manomas vowed that she would
never marry in the order of polygamy.

!Manomas's older sister Laura had married James Andrus and in 1861 came to live

in St. George, Utah near the rest of the Gibson family.  After some time, James
asked Manomas to become his plural wife.  She did not consent at once, but did
not "spit in his face" as she had vowed to do should any man ask her to enter
polygamy.  She ended up marrying Captain Andrus in 1862, a step in life that
she said she never regretted.

!In her later years, Manomas was known to all as "Aunt Nome".