He was born at Chester and died at Iridge Place, a listed country house near Hurst Green, East Sussex. Gibson was the eldest son of the Reverend William Gibson (1804–1862) and his first wife, Eliza Maria, who was the daughter of John Bird Sumner, Archbishop of Canterbury. The reformer and churchman William Wilberforce was also a relation.
Many of the 13 children produced by William Gibson"s two marriages had "Sumner" as part of their collection of forenames, and some then hyphenated it with "Gibson" to produce a double-barrelled surname. John Sumner Gibson appears not to have done so and to have been known, in the family at least, as "Sumner Gibson" with "Sumner" as the preferred forename. Gibson was educated at Harrow School, where he played in the cricket team, and at Trinity College, Cambridge.
His one recorded first-class cricket match was the University Match of 1855 when he batted low in the batting order, scoring 8 and 23, and did not bowl.
