Wellington Smith Gibbs was born in July 1845, at Glenburn, Maine. By the age of 17, he was teaching school in the state, going on to become a principal and later a superintendent of schools before business pursuits brought him from Maine to Maryland to Delaware, where he worked for a machinery company.
He then came west to Burlington, Iowa, where he was an accountant for the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad, and he moved to Omaha in 1873, teaching school here for three years.
After teaching in Omaha, he studied medicine with a doctor in Waterloo, Iowa, and received his M.D. degree in 1879 from the University of Iowa. After graduating, he practiced for a few months in Downey, Iowa, before returning to Omaha in 1880 to practice medicine. He was one of the incorporators of the Omaha Medical College (forerunner of UNMC), a member of the board of trustees and a member of the faculty, as demonstrator of anatomy. From 1881-1906, he was a professor of physiology and medicine.
He was a member of Phi Chi medical fraternity, a founding member of the Omaha Medical Society (now the Metro Omaha Medical Society) and a member of the Nebraska and American Medical Associations. In 1885 he served as Douglas County physician.
He once again became involved in education in the 1890s as a member of the Omaha School Board. He served on the board of trustees of the now-defunct Bellevue College, and he was among the founders of the University of Omaha (now UNO) in 1908, serving on the board of trustees there from 1908-1922.
He was the medical examiner for an insurance company, the Home Life Association of Burlington, Iowa. He was on the board of directors of the Nebraska Savings and Exchange Bank in Omaha.
He was married in Waterloo in February 1875, to Mary E. McLaughlin, the daughter of James McLaughlin, M.D., of Waterloo, the physician with whom he apprenticed. He was a member of the Masons and of the First Presbyterian Church in Omaha.
A 1917 biographical sketch of Gibbs noted that he was “a man of very charitable nature, a student and a philosopher.” It also noted that “Dr. and Mrs. Gibbs occupy a beautiful home at Dundee, one of the suburbs of Omaha.”
Gibbs died in Omaha in November 1926.