SCHERER, JOHN JACOB (1830-1919). John Jacob Scherer, teacher, was born near Rural Retreat, Wythe County, Virginia, the son of Jacob and Elizabeth (Spoon) Scherer, on February 7, 1830. After some education in a country school, he attended Virginia Collegiate Institute and Pennsylvania College, where he graduated in 1852. He accepted a teaching position in the private school of a Judge Munger in San Felipe, Texas, but soon was teaching school in Columbus. With his father and his brother, Gideon Scherer, Jacob organized Colorado College in Columbus under the auspices of the Lutheran Church in 1857. All three of them taught in the college. On October 19, 1863, John Jacob Scherer enlisted in the Confederate Army for a six-month period. He returned to Virginia in 1867 and there was married to Elizabeth Katherine Killinger. They moved to Texas, where Scherer served as president of Colorado College until 1873, when he left Texas to go back to Virginia; there he founded Marion College. He served as its president until 1910 and remained as president emeritus until his death in 1919.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Goodridge Wilson, A Brief History of Marion College (Marion, Virginia, 1948).
