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[From Warren History, Volume One, No. 8, Fall 1992] |
| Rev. Peter Gibb was pastor of the Mount Bethel Baptist Church from 1871 to 1911, nearly 40 years. The following was written of him after he died: "There died at Millington, this County, on March 26th [1912], Rev. Peter Gibb, a model country pastor, whose place of nativity was Aberdeenshire, in Scotland, and whose early life, until 36 years of age, was spent partly in that country of moor and highlands, and partly in England. Born Dec. 21, 1835, he studied in Glasgow University, and began his ministry, as a Baptist clergyman, at Falkirk, where he remained only a short time. He then took charge of the church at Wolsingham, Durham Co., England, where he remained five years. In 1871 he came to this country and began his ministry at Millington, April 23, 1871 .... Mr. Gibb also served the Mt. Bethel Church 38 years, resigning recently. In his ministry of 41 years he conducted 253 funerals, preached at Millington 3,673 sermons and at out stations and other places 643 times. At Mt. Bethel Church he preached 1,944 sermons, a total of 6,260. He chose 1,066 texts from the Old Testament and 1,344 from the New Testament. In 1871 he married to Margaret A. Garrett, who survives him, with two children. |
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An admirable obituary notice of him thus states well his talents and character: 'Mr. Gibb served an ideal ministry. He was dearly beloved by all his people and by all who knew him. His beautiful white church nestled among the trees on a gentle slope near the Passaic river. Beside it stands the parsonage, immaculate, surrounded by its beautiful gardens that Mr. Gibb tended with his own hands. He was an expert gardener and a great lover of flowers. Years ago Mr. Gibb taught all the young people of the community to sing and every winter conducted singing classes. He conducted services regularly in the little Baptist church at Mount Bethel in the afternoon. This is one of the oldest churches in the region, the present building having been erected before the Revolutionary war. He had a fine taste for music and showed an uncommon appreciation of Hymnology in a paper that he read before the Ministers' Union in the fall of 1910. This was so good that the Union ordered it to be printed.
Mr. Gibb was surrounded by a parish made up of farmers as well as people from nearby cities; and in all their aspirations after the best things his fine spirit ever led them on. This whole region will be very much the poorer by the passing of this simple, sweet spirited man of God." To this we need only add that Mr. Gibb had a fine Scottish sense of humor and that his domestic as well as his official life was full of courtesy, charitableness and helpfulness. He was an ideal man in more ways than one. We remember his sunny face and charm of voice as one whose influence on his neighborhood and among his friends was always uplifting and broadening. He had the strong, stalwart, rugged aspect of a true Scotchman, whose life was wrapped up in doing good, and whose piety was based on solid foundations. Until 12 months before his death he bore his 78 years with such active service among his people that it scarcely seemed as if he might not live out a century of usefulness. His form was always bent, but his eye was ever as bright as his soul was clean, and his strength was as of a strong man drawing a bow at a mark which he was certain to hit. In Sunday School work, in Temperance advocacy, in the religious activities of the young, in missionary, enterprises, he was always alert and prominent. But in March, 1911, he began to have serious trouble with his heart, and from that period onward he was a broken-down man in body, though not in temperament or hopefulness. On Feb. 9, 1912, he wrote a helpful letter to the Editor of the Quarterly concerning this new enterprise, and six weeks later he passed to the realms of the blest."
[From the Somerset County Historical Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 3, July 1912]