Gibson recounts her childhood in Mesa where her family settled in the late 1800s. She was born and lived at 42 S. Center where the first Mormon Church is now. Mrs. Gibson had diphtheria as a child and the whole family was quarantined. Later her older sister died of typhoid and it was discovered that their well had been contaminated from their outhouse. Gibson talks about her father being very active in the Mormon church and in politics. She remembers that her family went to Phoenix on the train for the ceremony when Arizona became a state. Gibson's grandfather Francis Martin Pomeroy helped lay out the streets of Mesa patterned after the wide streets of Salt Lake City.