John met the young black widow Flora, who had a year-old son Robert. He cared for Robert as if he were his own. Together the couple had seven children; their family crossed rigid racial boundaries. Robert was given the middle name Sengstacke to mark his belonging in the family. John Sengstacke had become a Congregationalist missionary as an adult; he wrote, "There is but one church, and all who are born of God are members of it. God made a church, man made denominations. God gave us a Holy Bible, disputing men made different kinds of disciples." Sengstacke became a teacher, determined to improve the education of black children. He also became a publisher, founding the "Woodville Times," based in what was then a town named Woodville; it was later annexed by the city of Savannah, Georgia. Given the industrialization under way in the country, from 1892 to 1896, Abbott studied the printing trade at Hampton Institute (now Hampton University), a historically black college in Virginia. At Hampton, he sang with the Hampton Choir and Quartet, which toured nationally. He earned a law deree from Kent College of Law, Chicago, in 1898.