I built a test server and found that the ssl gmail settings would not work. I tried the generic mail and it did!
I reset the permissions on the working server, set the mail subsystem to generic WITHOUT any email address modifications, line 2 and it appears to work. The AbanteCart instructions are far too vague and lack screen print examples.
So the takeaway is to reset all of the folders permissions to 0755 and do not bother with gmail, in instance. I'm not sure if there was a permissions issue since I was throwing multiple possible solutions as nothing was working and it worked, without the email modifiers.
Thanks a lot for your ideas. You pointed me in the right direction.