FOR A CITY of modest size with a smallish harbor, Salem, Massachusetts, in the late 18th century was the site of an extraordinary confluence of men and opportunity as entrepreneurs, shipbuilders, captains, and merchants made it a center of international trade. Every young man’s dream, if he lived in Salem and had connections, was to go to sea and make his fortune.
One such man was John Gibaut (1767–1805), who, in 1786, at the age of nineteen, while still enrolled at Harvard College, went on his first voyage. He quickly rose to be captain of his own ships, but after thirteen years at sea he retired to a farm in Gloucester, where he lived until his death at age 38. On the surface, it was an unremarkable life, not unlike that of hundreds of men along the Eastern seaboard at this time—but with a twist.
Gibaut’s mentor as a youth was the renowned minister, scholar, and columnist Rev. William Bentley (1759–1819), a child of the Enlightenment, an early Unitarian of great erudition who wrote a weekly column for the Salem Gazette that was read well beyond Salem and New England. (Thomas Jefferson asked Bentley to be president of the University of Virginia, but the latter declined.) Bentley’s diaries constitute a record of life in Salem between 1784 and 1814. The fact that Gibaut came to his attention, first as protégé and later as a close friend and companion—plus his artfully revealing references to Gibaut’s unusual “habits”—is thus of some note.
Let me quote Bentley at length on the topic of his friend,
This day reached us from First Parish in Gloucester, the account of the death of John Gibaut, Esqr. … When he took his first degree in 1786 he was a Scholar, a Gentleman, & a man of sterling worth. But by becoming a student, his modesty degenerated into a reserve which confined his acquaintance, & feeling an aversion to the labours of society and the learned professions he was allured by the wealth of the families around him to try the seas. He went on several voyages to the East Indies, but soon indulged the hopes of retirement. … Thus brought into notice he became an object of the just solicitude of his friends but his inconquerable habits still pursued retirement. With Capt. G. G. Smith, with whom he lived in the greatest intimacy, & in company with whom he had performed several voyages, he purchased the farm … he gave up application, & gradually decayed till he sunk insensibly into Death having passed the 37 year of his age. The manner in which the property of the farm & mills was invested, produced a seperation from Capt. Smith, which his friend settled. … Thus terminated the life of a Man who had all the talents for usefulness & all the aid of friends with a settled aversion from all the habits of business, public life, & of an intercourse with the world.
As suggestive of a love affair between Gibaut and Smith as these diaries are, Bentley admits on numerous occasions to holding back. For example, on February 12, 1789, he wrote: “It is one of the greatest inconveniences when one ought to study with greater care, what is to be hid from one’s friends.” But despite Bentley’s habit of concealment, woven throughout surviving ships’ logs, documents, and diary entries are clues to the complex and “half hidden” life of Gibaut.
Life and Times of John Gibaut
Born into a seafaring family in Salem, John Gibaut was the only child of Edward Gibaut and Sara Crowninshield. His mother was one of two daughters of Capt. John Crowninshield, and he was nephew to Elias Haskett Derby, the greatest ship owner and merchant in Salem or perhaps all of New England. He entered the Dummer Charity School around 1780. The Academy was known for training boys for admission to Harvard. In 1782 he began his studies at Harvard College, where Bentley had been a tutor of Latin and Greek. He graduated in 1786, but it was not an easy four years. On November 13, 1782, he was given a “leave of absence for ten days on account of a cutaneous disorder.” On March 24, 1783, it was voted “that Gibaut have leave to go home on account of his being in a bad state of health.” There were multiple references to absences, duties neglected, and punishments. College did not seem to suit him.
Bentley knew Gibaut as a parishioner and as a student at Harvard when he entered in 1782, but the first mention of the young Gibaut in Bentley’s diaries was in 1786, when he was in trouble at Harvard (for reasons unknown; a reference to “bad habits”). However, Bentley wrote to the president of the university: “Gibaut is thought by his friends at Salem to be in such habit as requires an experiment of Sea air.” This was quickly followed by another: “He is in extreme danger, without doubt, of losing life, & our last & only hope is from the advantages of a voiage.” Whatever prompted Bentley’s plea, it proved to be an inspired suggestion, providing Gibaut with all the benefits of a life at sea.
Indeed, Gibaut’s career was not insignificant, though ill health followed him throughout his life. From 1786 to 1799, his ports of call included several in France, the Cape of Good Hope, the Straits of Malacca, Burma, the Isle of France (Mauritius), India, China, Guadeloupe, and New York, among others. While living in Salem, he was a deputy master of the Salem Marine Society (of which his father was a founder) and a founding member of the East India Marine Society (now the Peabody Essex Museum). He was credited by Bentley for a major portion of the information that lead to Nathaniel Bowditch’s The American Practical Navigator (1802). Upon retiring from the sea, he became collector of customs in Gloucester.
Curious Liaisons
Shortly after Gibaut’s first voyage at age twenty, Bentley gives us our first hint at something unusual in an entry for July 30, 1787: “Capt Elkins returned, & brought with him a curious female adventurer, who pretended that she was carried of[f]from Norfolk in Virginia, by a Captain from Waterford, from whence she escaped to Gotheburg & from thence came to Salem. After tarrying a few days at Capt Gibaut’s she sailed in Dennis for Virginia, under the name of Jude Wilkie Hiscomb.” For Gibaut to have put up a “curious female adventurer” with an ambiguously masculine name hints at the first in a series of puzzling references. Nothing more is known about Jude Wilkie Hiscomb, but that Gibaut’s would have been the one household in Salem to entertain such a guest must have raised questions if not eyebrows.
A case of thievery was recorded on April 20, 1790: “Last night the house of Capt Gibaut was broken open. Forcible entrance was made by a window. They ransacked the lower part of the house, & even lodged a fork taken from the window upon the bed of a person asleep. They carried off Plate, exceeding £20 in value, besides Linen to considerable amount.” Bentley wrote a week later that the thief, the son of Widow Elkins, was known to Gibaut, and that: “It is feared that discoveries may be made prejudicial to some of our neighbours.” In a subtle nod to the deeper possibilities, he wrote: “The report of young Elkins is suspicion [sic]but upon examination fails of full proof.” Could it be that Gibaut was entertaining a guest who took advantage of the situation? It’s hard to believe that he could have slept through all that commotion.
Another curious entry appears when a Spanish ship pulled into Salem harbor for repairs and the residents of Salem vied with each other to entertain the officers. Gibaut had the captain of the ship to dinner with Rev. Bentley. Occasionally Bentley wrote in Latin, as he did on Oct. 16, 1791 (as translated): “I accepted to have a meal with the Spaniard, the ship commander, at J. Gibaut’s. I find that his brother does not approve of any kind of the choices of the man, neither in favor of his [preferences]nor against them.” Was Bentley implying that the Spanish captain did not approve of the “preferences” of his “brother” (fellow ship captain)?
The ship’s log of the Henry for September 1789 recorded that George Girdler Smith was at Madras (now Chennai) and that “Mr. Gibaut and his servant boarded.” They did not leave India for Salem until March 1790, when the log recorded that “Capt Derby and Mr. Smith and Mr. Geabut and Servent came on board at 3 pm waid anchor in Madras.” Gibaut and his servant transferred to another ship near Eustatia Island (British Virgin Islands) and arrived in Salem by December 26, 1790. Three days later, Bentley wrote: “Had the pleasure of seeing for the first time a native of the Indies from Madras. He is of very dark complection, long black hair, soft countenance, tall & well proportioned. He is said to be darker than Indians in general of his own cast, being much darker than any native Indians of America. I had no opportunity to judge of his abilities, but his countenance was not expressive. He came to Salem with Capt. J. Gibaut, and has been in Europe.”
This has become a famous entry in the context of his having been the first Indian servant in America. Is there another possibility? Most captains had a cabin boy on board, though it was not always a minor who served. He is described by Bentley in the language of an attractive man about town rather than a servant. What’s more, ocean travel was considered inauspicious by Hindus and expressly prohibited. So what prompted this man to leave India? There is no further record of him. Gibaut did not sail again until May 1791, when he returned to India on the Astrea.
Capt. Gibaut and Capt. Smith
Capt. George Girdler Smith (1757?-1810), most often mentioned by Bentley in conjunction with Gibaut, is said to have been in the Revolutionary War and was a prisoner in England with his father and brothers. In 1780, he married Sarah Ashton and they had four children in Danvers, Massachusetts, between 1785 and 1795, only one of whom, also named George Girdler Smith, lived to maturity. The records are scant and contradictory.
Smith was first mentioned by Bentley in 1785 in a list of parishioners. It is not known exactly when Smith met Gibaut, although they knew each other in 1789 when they were on the Henry from India. They first appear together in the diaries on August 29, 1794: “Went with Capt. Gibaut & Capt. G. B. Smith into the Bay.” There are many references after that to Bentley meeting with Gibaut and Smith, fishing with them in Salem harbor, having meals and tea in town and later at the farm in Gloucester, journeys by boat, horse, or carriage, to Boston and the North Shore.
On July 3, 1796, Bentley wrote: “I went with Mr. Smith in his small boat up the river.” Three days later he wrote: “Extreme caution will not answer. I am again called in question in a little family dispute, & I am between the parties. They pretend they have found something which needs explanation.” This entry raises a question, coming close on the heels of the farm’s acquisition, and a trip on the river implies that it had something to do with Gibaut and Smith.
Smith was ten years older than Gibaut, married with two living children when they met. Smith apparently remained married until at least 1799, when he had a son, William, while living on Cape Ann. The records have not yet yielded any information as to what happened to Smith’s wife Sarah or his son William. There are no other references or acknowledgment of Smith’s wife or children by Bentley. After leaving Gloucester, Smith settled in Breed’s Island, Lynn, before returning to Salem and dying in 1810, penniless according to Bentley. There are no probate or land records, no inventory of his estate, and his only surviving son seems never to have acknowledged him.
Bentley noted on November 15, 1797, “Captain Gibaut has been the purchaser of a farm in Gloucester.” If Bentley was correct that it was Gibaut who bought the property (the deeds from the seller confirm this), it appears from other surviving documents that Gibaut and Smith may have agreed to share the farm financially and that Smith might have moved there first and started repairs and improvements. In one document dated October 25, 1801, addressed to Gibaut as “My friend,” Smith enclosed the deeds of the farm and two hundred dollars in cash and promised to pay $4,500 more, writing: “And as he [Gibaut] hath conveyed, or is about to convey, to me the Farm in Gloucester aforesaid which I now occupy.”
A month later, another document signed by Smith stated “in consideration of one dollar paid me by John Gibaut of Salem in said County merchant,” and further stated that he would satisfy all debts and demands against “him or him and myself joint” for all work done on the farm by Smith. Smith may have been assuming too much in the purchase of the property by Gibaut, perhaps offering to share expenses if they shared the property.
Although Bentley stated in his eulogy for Gibaut that he and Smith lived in “the greatest intimacy,” he never explained why they separated in 1801. He wrote on January 12, 1803: “My friend Gibaut & Capt. G. G. Smith have amiably settled their affairs. They came together to my house & Smith offered his services during his Voyage.” Amiable it must have been if they visited Bentley together. Two-and-a-half years later, on July 12, 1805, a month before Gibaut died, Bentley and Smith made “another excursion to spring Pond” by themselves, where they fished.
As amiable as their life together and separation had been, Smith was not included as one of seven friends to whom Gibaut left a legacy in his will of twenty dollars each: “As a mark of affection, esteem & regard … in order that they may purchase some token to be held in remembrance of me.” Gibaut’s funeral was recorded by Bentley on August 13, 1805, and he mentioned various members of the family and friends attending, but not Smith.
Smith disappears from the diaries until five years later, when Bentley wrote on November 21, 1810: “The d[eath]of Capt. G G Smith is announced. He was one of the generous & improvident men which are to be found in our world. I knew him early upon my coming to Salem from his connections with Capt. J Gibaut. I always found him liberal, social, inventive, & useful. But he was too fond of pleasure. I know of no direct guilt either of intemperance or dissolute manners. But he took the best care of himself. He went to Gloucester from Danvers with Gibaut. Returned to Danvers & erected a proud building. Was embarrassed & moved to Lynn to a Hotel & thence to Salem to die in the arms of the public charities, at 53.” As usual, Bentley’s entry is informative but inconclusive.
Both the nature of Gibaut’s relationship with the adult Indian man that he brought to Salem and the depth of his intimate friendship with Smith are open to interpretation. However, taking key words and phrases from Bentley and other documentary evidence about his life, we cannot fail to conclude that something unusual was going on. By acknowledging these clues, I hope it’s possible to partially construct a life worth acknowledging that speaks to the existence of same-sex relationships in the 18th century—and the impossibility of discussing them directly. A brief biographical entry about Gibaut in a history of Gloucester (1860) ended with the cryptic, if not coded, words: “He is said to have died a bachelor.”
William R. Sargent is an independent curator and former curator of Asian Export Art at the Peabody Essex Museum.
