Gloucester County was originally part of six sections called ``constablewicks,'' or townships. One of them was Greenwich, the oldest township in Gloucester County. Established in 1694, it covered one-third of the county and included portions of the present Harrison Township, Woolwich Township and Mantua. Parts of Greenwich eventually went to form East Greenwich, Paulsboro and Franklin Township.
Gibbstown occupies most of present-day Greenwich Township; 9.5 square miles is all that remains of the original township, and Gibbstown occupies 9.2 square miles. In the early 1800s, the tract was owned by Ethen Gibbs, a major landowner and blacksmith, for whom the town was named. In tribute to him, an anvil he once used in his trade was erected in front of the Greenwich Township Municipal Building (now the Gibbstown police station).
Rink, a retired civil engineer who is Gibbstown's councilman in charge of clean communities, said there wasn't any significant development in Gibbstown until 1874, when the railroad came to the area. Industries quickly began to spring up. DuPont Co. built the Repauno Chemical Works along the Delaware River in 1880.
Progress had its price. An 1884 newspaper reported, ``Six men were killed in the fatal nitroglycerine explosion at Gibbstown, at the Rapauno Chemical Co. about six miles below Woodbury on the Delaware River, blown to atoms. . . . No [house] windows were broken in Gibbstown, [but] nearly every pane of glass in the . . . buildings connected with the works was shattered.''
Ray Wharton, a 40-year resident and salesman for Glocker Real Estate, talked about Gibbstown's residents, many of whom work in refinery industries or state and county governments.
