their interests, acquiring further property in the nearby trading port of Bristol, where they flourished as Merchant Venturers with links to the wool and cloth export industry and, later on, with the brewing industry as well. One of the direct ancestors of the future baronets, Henry Gibbes (1563–1636), of Redcliffe Street, was a mayor of Bristol and an "alderman of the city". He married Anne Packer (1561–1631), of Cheltenham, and an engraved brass memorial commemorating them and their children can be seen in Bristol's Priory Church of St James. Twelve months before his death, an ailing Henry Gibbes had sent the youngest of his three sons, Philip, to the newly colonised West Indian island of Barbados to seek his fortune. He would be joined later on Barbados by some other members of his immediate family—as well as by representatives of the wider Gibbes clan. Barbados was in those days a proprietary colony of Great Britain. It became a refuge for Royalists. Philip Gibbes was a supporter of the monarchy and a Cavalier by political and religious persuasion. He acquired land on Barbados' west coast and prospered through the propagation of sugarcane. He died at his plantation in St James Parish of a tropical fever in 1648; he had married a woman named Avis and founded an island dynasty: Sir Philip Gibbes, 1st Baronet was a great-grandson. The Gibbes family made their money by harvesting and milling bulk loads of sugarcane, using black slave labour, imported from Africa. They distilled and exported rum and participated in the Triangular Trade. Landmarks along the western coastline of Barbados such as Gibbes Beach, Gibbes Bay and the village of Gibbes still commemorate the family's name. References William Betham's Baronetage, Volume III (London, 1803), under "Gibbes"; Burke's Peerage and Baronetage (London, 1835, 1869 and other, subsequent editions), under "Gibbes"; Debrett's Baronetage of England (London, 1835), under "Gibbes"; Howard's Miscellanea and Genealogica et Heraldica, Volume I, Second Series, (London, 1886), under "Gibbes"; The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, Volume 4, 1773-1790 (Kershaw, London, 1827), online addition, accessed September 2010; New Zealand Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, historical records, and the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, historical records, online indices, accessed September 2010; The Papers of Charles Abbot, 1st Baron Colchester (1757–1829), held by The National Archives, Kew, London, PRO 30/9 – accessed from the National Archives (formerly known as The Public Record