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Henry Richard Gibson was an American politician and a member of the United States House of Representatives for the 2nd congressional district of Tennessee. He was born on December 24, 1837 on Kent Island, Maryland in Queen Anne's County. He attended the common schools at Kent Island and at Bladensburg, Maryland. He graduated from Decker's Academy at Bladensburg in 1858 and from Hobart College at Geneva, New York in 1862. He served in the commisary department of the Union Army from March 1863 to July 1865. He entered Albany Law School in New York in September 1865. He was admitted to the bar in December 1865 and commenced practice in Knoxville, Tennessee in January 1866.

Henry Gibson moved to Jacksboro, Tennessee in Campbell County in October 1866. He was appointed commissioner of claims by Governor William G. Brownlow in 1868. He was a delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1870. He was a member of the Tennessee Senate from 1871 to 1875 and a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1875 to 1877. He returned to Knoxville in 1876. He founded the Knoxville Republican in 1879 and became its editor. In 1881, he was appointed post office inspector, and in 1882 he became the editor of the Knoxville Daily Chronicle. He was appointed United States pension agent at Knoxville on June 22, 1883 and served until June 9, 1885.

From 1886 to 1894, he was chancellor of the second chancery division of Tennessee. He was a professor of medical jurisprudence in the Tennessee Medical College from 1889 to 1906. In 1891, he was the author of Gibson’s Suits in Chancery. He was elected as a Republican to the Fifty-fourth and the four succeeding Congresses. He served from March 4, 1895 to March 3, 1905, but he declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1904.

He was an associate editor in 1896 and an associate reviser in 1918 of the Code of Tennessee. Gibson retired from public life and resided in Washington, D.C., being engaged as a writer, as an author, and as a consulting editor of the American and English Encyclopedia of Law and Practice. He died on May 25, 1938 in Washington, D.C. The remains were cremated and the ashes deposited in the Old Gray Cemetery at Knoxville, Tennessee.

This article incorporates facts obtained from the public domain Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.