Elizabeth Hall
A Walk Through History
John Gibbard, a man of English-Scottish descent, was a cabinetmaker when he moved to Napanee in 1835. He founded the Gibbard Furniture company in 1835, and in 1860 he leased a mill on the canal that runs through the Gibbard plant.
In the beginning, their employment rate was low, and they made windows and furniture out of butternut and walnut, but also made coffins and various items for the local farming community. But soon their employment grew into the low hundreds, the factory being a place of employment for a lot of people living in and around the town. After John’s son William T. Gibbard joined the company in 1868, Gibbard’s became known for its finely made furniture made from mahogany. The company remained in the Gibbard family for four generations until 1940, when a man named Jack McPherson, who was a sales manager in the 1920’s, bought the factory and began rebuilding it. The McPherson family continued to own and operate the company until it closed in 2009.
The company launched its flagship brand of cherry and mahogany furniture in 1964, named the Canadian Legacy collection. This brand was sold by retailers from Kingston Ontario, all the way to Madrid, Spain, and the furniture is in use in 70 different Canadian embassies and high commissions worldwide. Gibbard’s was recognized as one of the finest Canadian furniture lines sold by retailers. The company operated for 173 years and was also titled the oldest furniture maker in Canada, and one of the oldest continuously operating companies in North America before it closed.
Random History Fact: Every role in Shakespeare’s plays were played by men, even the female roles. That’s because in England it was seen as inappropriate for women to professionally act on public stages until 1660.