Born in Surry (now Sussex) Co., Virginia, in 1734, Thomas Gibbons settled here in 1778 after being forcibly ejected from a homestead about 12 miles east by Robert Young. The courts of Spencer County, State of Franklin, met in his house from 1785 to 1787. On June 4, 1787, the first county court of Hawkins County, North Carolina, met here. Gibbons died in 1811.