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.