Part 3 continues the file on Elijah Harris Crabtree from Cal Bivens.
1860
By 1860 the family was settled in a pretty compact area, clustered in Virgil Township, Kane County, Illinois. They were roughly 40-45 miles west of Chicago.
Arnold and Rachel Crabtree lived near his sister and brother-in-law, Frances and Edmund H. Wallace.
Richard and Mary Crabtree lived a ways away from them. Elijah seems to have already been established in the “shanty” on Milt Thornton’s land.
George Giggy and William Crabtree were close neighbors near Elijah and Milt Thornton. Farther down the road lived the Fillmores and the Reads.
I want to back up a bit to Milt Thornton. This is because he seems to have been a good friend of the family. Milton Thornton arrived in Kane County in May 1837, at a time when the cabins of the settlers were few and far between. He was a native of New Hampshire, born in Grafton County, October 20, 1809. His father, William Thornton, was also a native of New Hampshire and a direct descendant of Matthew Thornton, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. His wife was Polly Bagley, a daughter of Winthrop Bagley, a soldier in the Revolutionary War.
Milton Thornton was mostly self-educated, his knowledge was of a practical nature acquired in adulthood. He came west by way of the New York and Erie Canal and the Great Lakes, to Chicago, and crossed the Fox River at Geneva May 24, 1837. He at once took up a claim in the town of Virgil, Kane County, comprised of 275 acres, on which he built a house, and began its improvement.
In his early life, Mr. Thornton was an old-line Whig, and cast his first presidential vote for Henry Clay in 1832. Being a strong anti-slavery man, and a believer in equal rights for all, he voted for John C. Fremont, in 1856, and afterword became a staunch Republican.
At the time the Crabtrees knew him, Milt was married to his second wife, Paulina Bunker. At various times he served as township supervisor, justice of the peace, and road commissioner.
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