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William J. Sibert
WILLIAM J. SIBERT, was born October 17, 1833,
in St. Clair County, Ala., and is a son of David and Elizabeth (Cook) Sibert,
natives of Abbeyville District, S. C. The senior Mr. Sibert was a planter. He
moved to St. Clair County in 1819, and thence to DeKalb County in 1833, where he
purchased land from the Indians, eighty acres of which, according to their
tradition, had been in cultivation over one hundred years. The old gentleman
spent the rest of his life in DeKalb
County.
He was the father of eleven children, eight
of whom grew to adult estate, to-wit: John W., farmer died in Arkansas; Henry,
farmer, DeKalb County; Martha, widow of William Waddell, of Arkansas; Geo. W.,
deceased; Jasper, a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church South, now of Arkansas;
Julia (Mrs. Arthur A. Parr), both she
and her husband are dead;
Hulda, deceased; Mary (Mrs. W. B. Beeson, of DeKalb County). John W. and Henry
were both soldiers in the Southern Army during the late war. David Sibert's
father came to America
as a soldier in the British Army, served his term of enlistment, and at once joined the
Colonial Army under General Marion, and adopted this country as his home. He
married a Miss Wilmore, of Virginia, reared three sons and three daughters, and
died in South Carolina,
where he had been a farmer, and a preacher in the
Lutheran Church. The Cook family, from which
the subject of this sketch is
descended through the
maternal line, were probably of mixed German and
English extraction.
William J. Sibert was reared on a farm, received a common-school education, and
was thirty-five years of age when he enlisted in Company I, Tenth
Alabama, as a second lieutenant. He served a few months, when ill-health forced
him to resign. In the spring of 1862, he joined Company G. Forty-eighth Alabama,
and with that regiment participated
in the battles of second Manassas, the Wilderness.
Petersburg, etc. He was wounded at Manassas,
and at Petersburg was forced from its effects to retire from field duty. He then
accepted a position in the quartermaster's department and remained
to the close of the war.
After farming two years, he, in 1867, came to Gadsden, engaged in hotel business, until
1879, then in mercantile business, to which he has since given his attention. His first partner
was named Barrett, firm of Barrett & Sibert. Mr. Barrett retired in 1882, and the firm has since been Sibert & Ward.
He is also the senior member of the firm of Sibert & Blair, wholesale and retail
dealers in hardware. In addition to mercantile business, he has been and
is now interested in agriculture. He was married September 20, 1856, to Miss
Mary E. Ward. Of the ten children born to them, six are living: Charlcie (Mrs.
A. J. Blair); William L., graduate of the West Point Class 1884, also in corps
of engineers at Willett's Point, N. Y., class of 1887, and a lieutenant in the
United States Engineers Corps; Samuel H., Martin D., Fannie B., Olin W. The
family is connected with the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and Mr. Sibert
is a Freemason.
Source:
McCalley, Henry, Northern Alabama :
historical and biographical.
Birmingham, AL: Smith & De
Land, 1888, pp. 835.
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