Liberty C. Abbott Family Papers

Liberty Constantine Abbott was born in Busti, Chautauqua County, New York on December 6, 1836. His father was Harry Abbott (1800-1877), a merchant and farmer, and his mother was Louisa Bostwick Abbott (1810-1865). Liberty had four brothers—Alexander Franklin (1829-1905), Rollin Vespasian (1840-1889), Francis Marion (1844-1908), and Eugene Augustus (b. 1855)—and four sisters—Emeline Cecelia (1830-1885), Louisa M. (1832-1862), Charlotte Lucinda (b. 1836), and Emmogene Augusta (1847-1852). In 1864 he married Maria Traver Reed (1830-1912), who had divorced her first husband, Tembroeck Reed, in 1859 and already had a son, Nate A. Reed. Liberty and Maria Abbott had one child, Birdie Traver Abbott Jones Gearhart (1869-1946).

Liberty Abbott clerked in Warren, Pennsylvania, and then went to work in the family hotel. In July 1861, Abbott enlisted in E Company, Fifth Regiment, New York Volunteer Cavalry as a private and mustered out as a major in August 1865. Abbott received an appointment to the Internal Revenue service in 1869 and was stationed in Holly Springs, Mississippi. In 1872 he was appointed to the post of superintendent of schools in Marshall County. On July 10, 1874, he was appointed chancery judge for the Ninth District of Mississippi but left that post in 1876. In 1888 he was appointed alderman of the town of Howard. After stepping down as chancery judge in 1876, Abbott went into partnership with his sister Charlotte’s husband, Myron Waters, to run Clifton Plantation in Holmes County, Mississippi. At the time of his death Abbott owned the plantation. Abbott was involved in the Masons, was a Knight Templar of the Twenty-first Degree, and was a member of the Knights of Pythias. Liberty Abbott died in Howard on August 9, 1894.

Francis Marion Abbott was born on January 28, 1844, in New York. He married Gertrude E. Henry (b. 1840) in 1870, and had one child, Mabel H. Abbott (b. 1879?). F. Marion Abbott was educated at Warren Union School in Pennsylvania. Abbott served in the Union Army during the Civil War and was discharged in 1865 as a major. That same year he moved to Aberdeen, Mississippi, and in 1866 he moved onto a plantation in part of Chickasaw, later Clay, County. From 1870 until 1874 Abbott served in the Mississippi legislature as a Republican senator. He founded Abbott, Mississippi, in 1878. He served as president of the Birmingham, Selma and New Orleans Railroad. Abbott bought and reorganized the Selma, Alabama, streetcar line and served as president and general manager until his death in September 1908.

Birdie Traver Abbott Jones Gearhart was born on November 21, 1869, at her father’s Clifton Plantation. She married Peyton Tabb Jones (1854-1901) on April 30, 1896, and had a son, Peyton Abbott “Buddy” Jones (1897-1975). She married her second husband, Frank P. Gearhart (1869-1931) on February 24, 1903, at Clifton Plantation. Frank Gearhart managed a timber firm pioneering in the Quiver River area of Leflore County in the early 1900s. They had two children: Frances Gearhart (b. 1905) and Traver Gearhart (1907-1984). Birdie Gearhart died on May 22, 1946.

Sources: The Liberty C. Abbott family papers.

Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi. (1891). 2 vols. Chicago: Goodspeed. vol.1. pp.277-278; vol.2. p.33, 204.

Bostwick, Henry Anthon. (1901). Genealogy of the Bostwick Family: The Descendants of Arthur Bostwick of Stratford, Conn. Hudson, N.Y.: Bryan Printing Co. pp.490-491.

Brieger, James F. (1997). Hometown Mississippi. Jackson, Miss.: Town Square Books, p.96.

Dunbar, Rowland. (1935). Courts, Judges and Lawyers of Mississippi, 1798-1935. Jackson, Miss.: Hederman. p.249.

McNees, L.L. (1955). Cemetery Records: Holmes County, Mississippi. pp.77-78.