John Anderson, a local correspondent for “The Elevator” a San Francisco newspaper, wrote of the effects of the Barkerville fire, “Mr. Editor: —Since I last wrote you, we have met with a serious calamity— Barkerville has been entirely destroyed by fire, and it has been a ruinous loss to many…among the sufferers are our friends W.D. Moses, I.P. Gibbs, and Miss Hickman. Mrs. R. Gibbs saved her things, but lost her house”.
The Black residents mentioned are William Delany Moses who owned and operated a barbershop, I.P. Gibbs is a brother of Mifflin Gibbs. R. Gibbs is Rebecca Gibbs, a sister-in-law of Mifflin Gibbs, and one of Canada’s first Black female poets. Her poem about this fire was published in the Cariboo Sentinel and later in The Elevator. Her story
