ABRAHAM SCHOLL, Jr., is another of the elder Abraham's children of whom there is little record. His name is but
dimly remembered by most of the family descendants now living. It is known that he was the elder Abraham's 14th
child and the eighth by his second wife, Tabitha Noe. He was born in Clark county, Kentucky, about the year 1817
and was married here in the west to Diantha Davis, of the early Brown and Pike county family of that name, in 1845.
In the year of his marriage (1845) his father and mother deeded to him the Scholl "home forty" north
of Griggsville, in consideration of "natural love and affection" and $25. The deed, dated August 25,
1845, recites that "Abraham Scholl the elder and Abitha his wife for and in consideration of the natural love
and affection which they bear unto said Abraham the younger and the sum of $25" do transfer, etc. Later, on
March 3, 1849, a deed signed by Abraham Scholl, Jr., and his wife Diantha transferred this forty to his brother,
Peter Scholl, who had lately married Eliza Jane Coleman.
Diantha (Davis) Scholl was born in 1826, being 19 at the time of her marriage to Abraham H. Scholl. She died October
23, 1853, when she was 27; she is buried in McCord cemetery at Perry, and beside her is her husband, A. H. Scholl,
who died a few years later, shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War.
John S. Wilson of Baylis relates that his father, William LeGrande Wilson, encountered young Abraham Scholl in
the pineries in Minnesota shortly before the Civil War. Wilson at the time was a chopper in the northern pineries.
Young Scholl became ill while there. He made his way to relatives in Grant county, Wisconsin, and eventually returned
to Pike county, where he died. He left no children.
Eliza Ann Scholl, Abraham's 16th child and ninth daughter, was born in Clark county, Kentucky in 1819. She married
Gilham Steele in Pike county September 24, 1835, with M. E. Rattan, Pittsfield's first postmaster and Justice of
Probate, performing the ceremony. They became parents of several children, among whom were Henry and Hardin Steele.
Hardin Steele, according to J. E. Scholl of Chicago, was raised by Eliza Jane (Coleman) Scholl, wife of Peter Scholl.
He married Huldah Davis in Pike county August 19, 1868, with A. C. Sanderson, a Detroit justice of the peace, officiating.
He became a prominent attorney in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and in Kansas City, Missouri. Henry Steele married Lovina
Napier in Pike county November 29, 1866, with Leonard Boone Elledge of Griggsville, then a Pike county justice,
performing the ceremony.
Eliza Ann Scholl's second marriage was to John A. (Aleck) Lovejoy, the ceremony being said in Pittsfield by the
Reverend William Carter, known as the "Father of the Pittsfield Congregational Church," September 3,
1862. The Lovejoys made their home in Newburg township on the West 80 in the Southwest quarter of Section 11, one
and a half miles north of the present Fred Kiser farm. Lovejoy, who had been married before and had a family, had
lived at this location since as early as 1855.
In the early 1870s, John A Lovejoy was plaintiff in a long drawnout law suit in the Pike county courts, involving
title to a 40-acre tract adjoining his 80 on the north and extending to Big Blue Creek. It appears from the records
in the case that this 40 belonged to Thomas B. Wade and that a verbal contract was entered into in 1857 between
Wade and Lovejoy whereby Wade, in consideration of Lovejoy cutting the saw timber on the 40 and hauling the saw
logs to Jones' sawmill on Blue Creek for Wade's benefit was to give Lovejoy a deed to the 40.
The records in this case throw much light upon this Newburg community of the 1850s and 1860s. Jones' mill on Blue
Creek, operated by Reuben Jones of Griggsville and owned by his mother, and later owned and operated by Joseph
H. French, figures largely in the Proceedings, the respective owners giving testimony anent the issues. John Elliott's
blacksmith shop and Tolley's lime kiln, now but dimly remembered by the oldest settlers, are other settings for
some of the testimony.
It appears that Lovejoy complied with the terms of the contract, cutting and hauling to Jones' mill some 65 or
70 logs, employing two yokes of cattle in hauling the logs, which were left in Jones' log-yard for the use and
benefit of Wade. He also made several hundred rails for Wade who, according to Lovejoy's testimony, lived "a
leetle the rise of a mile and a half" from the Lovejoy house, in the Bethel neighborhood. Wade died intestate
in October, 1867, without having made Lovejoy a deed. Wade's heirs resisted Lovejoy's claim to the 40 and the long
lawsuit resulted, continuing through several hearings, Lovejoy being represented by Attorneys James S. Irwin and
A. C. Matthews and the Wade heirs by William A. Grimshaw. The defendants, the Wade heirs, included Thomas, Richard,
Hampton and Sarah Ann Wade (Mrs. Hugh Duff), who were adult heirs, and Mary Jane, Nancy Ellen, Margaret Alice,
Luella, Henry C. and Frederick Wade, who were then minors. Margaret Wade, the widow, was also a defendant, as was
Sylvester C. Hoyt of Griggsville, administrator of the estate. Judge Chauncey L. Higbee in a decree established
the title in Lovejoy and directed the administrator to execute a deed to him, but at the same time protected the
rights of the widow to the property.
The Lovejoys in the fall of 1866 moved from the above 80 to the old Hickerson place on the plank road, now the
home of Thomas Crisp, and there, on October 18, 1866, Eliza Lovejoy's niece, Anna Eliza Wilson, was married to
Perry Manker. In the early 1870s, the Lovejoys lived in the village of Detroit and then moved to Scott county,
locating near Naples, where they had an extensive pecan grove in the Illinois river bottom. From Scott county they
returned to the Pike county side of the river and spent their remaining days in the house now occupied by Henry
Walker, near the Methodist church in Valley City. Although there is no official record of their deaths in Pike
county, it is established from the recollections of William Cook, Theo Clark and other old settlers at Valley that
both John A. Lovejoy and his wife Eliza died there. Mrs. Jane Comstock, widow of Samuel Comstock, Civil War veteran,
remembers having sat up at the Lovejoy home in Valley the night that Eliza Ann Lovejoy died which she says was
upwards of 40 years ago. Eliza Ann is buried in an unmarked grave on the extreme northern edge of Griggsville cemetery.
John A. and Eliza Ann Lovejoy had one child, Alice May Lovejoy, born in Newburg township in 1865. She married Charles
E. Gamel of Winchester, Scott county, November 21, 1886. The wedding was at the home of his father, Samuel Gamel,
with the Reverend John McLaughlin officiating. He was 25 and she 21. They resided for a time at Coon Island, opposite
Florence. Mrs. Rose Gregory, an aged lady of the Oxville neighborhood and a relative of the Gamels, states that
Charles E. Gamel and his wife left Scott county some 40 years ago, going to the state of Texas, and that the last
she knew of May Lovejoy Gamel she was living with her family in the state of Arkansas, her husband having died.
Mrs. Gregory, disagreeing with the Valley City folks as to John A. Lovejoy having died there, states that May's
father, following the death of his wife at Valley City, accompanied the Gamels to Texas and that John A. Lovejoy
died in that state.
Elizabeth Scholl, 16th child and youngest daughter of Abraham, was born in Clark county, Kentucky, May 29, 1821,
being four years old, lacking a few days, when the family came to Pike county in 1825. On June 29, 1836, she married
Charles F. Gibbs, a tailor by profession, who had come out from Kentucky and stopped at the early inn at Griggsville
kept by Marshall Key and his wife, Sarah Scholl, the latter being Elizabeth's elder sister. He was 22 and she 15
at the time of their marriage in Griggsville. Andrew Philips, a son of Nimrod of the famous ferry, and then a Pike
county justice, said the wedding ceremony.
Charles F. Gibbs and Elizabeth Scholl became the parents of five sons and three daughters, as follows: Fanny, the
eldest, born July 9, 1840, married Charles Petrie and resided in Illinois. She was a dressmaker. She died at Griggsville,
July 12, 1913, aged 73 years, and is buried in Griggsville cemetery. Her husband preceded her in death.
James Polk Gibbs (named for President James K. Polk) was born July 16, 1845, at Griggsville, and died July 30,
1878, at the age of 33. He was a veteran of the War of 1861-65. He never married. He is buried in Griggsville cemetery.
Linn Jackson Gibbs was born October 22, 1843 in Griggsville, and died there September 21, 1917, aged 73. He was
a harness-maker by trade. He married Maria Louisa Chew, December 28, 1865, the ceremony being said in White Hall,
Illinois. His bride was born on a farm north of New Salem, March 26, 1843, the youngest of seven children of Samuel
and Elizabeth (Baker) Chew, who came to Illinois from Georgetown, District of Columbia, in 1835. The family moved
from New Salem to Griggsville about 1848. To Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs was born one daughter, Miss Mary Gibbs, the present
city librarian at Griggsville. Mrs. Gibbs survived her husband many years, her death occurring in Griggsville January
2, 1927, at the age of 83 years, 9 months and 6 days. She was a member of the Good Templars when that organization
was a power in the county.
Martha (Mattie) Gibbs married Joseph K. Sharpe of Griggsville, September 13, 1865, the Reverend W. W. Whipple saying
the ceremony at Griggsville. She died in Jacksonville.
Charles Gibbs, Jr. married Theodosia Eastin in Pike county, Missouri. He died in that county.
Mary (Mae) D. Gibbs married John H. Shibley in Pittsfield, November 16, 1871, the Reverend E. C. Barnard officiating.
He was a son of Lieutenant William N. and Catherine (Woodard) Shibley, she a direct lineal descendant of the Boone
family. William N. Shibley, long engaged in the business of carriage making in Pittsfield and also at one time
connected with the Griggsville Manufacturing Company, was a veteran of the Mexican War under the gallant Colonel
John J. Hardin. He also fought Indians on the plains of Texas and when a resident of Pittsfield still had in his
possession some of the scalps taken in his adventurous days, hideous trophies of border warfare.
Mary D., wife of John H. Shibley, was born January 9, 1852 and died in Pittsfield September 22, 1882. She is buried
in the West cemetery at Pittsfield, her grave being marked by a beautiful monument erected by her father, Charles
F. Gibbs. The monument also marks the burial of three children of the Shibleys, all of whom died young. Harry Shibley,
born August 11, 1875, died at Barry November 29, 1881, at the age of 6. The latest born of the three children,
boy, lived but a day and died unnamed.
Morris Gibbs, another son of Charles F. Gibbs and Elizabeth Scholl, went to Iowa and died in that state; he was
never married.
Abram Breckenridge Gibbs, the only child of Charles F. and Elizabeth (Scholl) Gibbs, now living and one of the
three remaining grandchildren of Abraham Scholl, resides in Curryville, Missouri, at the age of 82. He was born
May 11, 1854 at Griggsville and was taken by his parents to Pike county, Missouri, in 1865. He married Mary (Mollie)
Staley in Pike county, Missouri. She also is still living.
Sitting on the porch of his home in Curryville on a hot day in August, 1936, this venerable Missoirian told the
writer the entertaining story of his own name, a story he said he had never told before. He was named Abraham Breckenridge
Gibbs by his parents. When he became old enough to understand the full significance of his name, he was much incensed.
He was a Democrat and here he was with a name that sounded like that of Abraham Lincoln. He would have none of
it. He thought his parents had betrayed him. He deliberately rejected the name of "Abram" that had been
bestowed upon him without his consent and took instead the name of William. From that day he has been known as
William B. Gibbs, the "B." being for the good old Democratic and Kentucky name of Breckenridge. He is
known to many of his friends as William "Boost" Gibbs, incident to a nickname which he acquired in his
youth.
Charles F. Gibbs moved his family to Missouri where he had acquired land, shortly after the Civil War. He died
at Frankford, Missouri, February 7, 1901, aged 87. His wife had died August 23, 1862 at the age of 41. Both are
buried in Griggsville cemetery, near the graves of Abraham Scholl and his wife, Tabitha Noe.