ABSTRACT
Wolcott Gibbs was born on March 15, 1902 and christened Oliver Wolcott Gibbs after an ancestor, Oliver Wolcott, who signed the Declaration of Independence as a delegate from Connecticut. His father, Lucius Tuckerman Gibbs, was an executive with the Pennsylvania Railroad and his mother came from an old and wealthy New York family, the Duers. He attended the Hill School, from which he was expelled, according to Brendan Gill, for causes unknown. Through his father's influence, he got a job on the Long Island Railroad, rising to the rank of brakeman. He married a railroadman's daughter, but the marriage was of short duration. Gibbs left the railroad after four years, at the urging of wealthy relatives, and, through their influence, obtained a reporter's job on a Long Island weekly. In 1927, he joined a fledgling magazine, The New Yorker, thanks to his cousin, Alice Duer Miller, whose name was listed below the magazine's masthead as one of the founding editors.
