Elijah and Priscilla Part 2

Emmigration to the United States
Probably in the late 1840s [about 1849 in his case] when much of the family was on the move, Elijah came to Portland, Maine. It is possible that he made passage aboard a vessel from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia along what is now a regular ferry run, but he may have sailed straight from St. John.

Elijah worked variously as a sawyer and a laborer. He lived at Vernon Court in Portland in 1850/51. By 1852 he had moved to 74 York Street and he lived there for about 3 years. By this time his last name had become Crabtree (implying that he adopted the Crabtree surname in about 1851). Elijah lived at #8 Dyer’s Alley from 1856 to about 1859.

In 1854, while Elijah and Priscilla lived in Portland, Maine their daughter, Sarah married Leonard Francis Gill. Leonard was the son of Daniel Gill and Lorinda Emily Leland. Daniel and Lorinda Gill were both from Massachusetts. Daniel was a victualer, proprietor of the Daniel Gill Victualing Business, a restaurant.

Westward to Illinois
In about 1859, Elijah and Priscilla moved to Illinois. Elijah worked as a carpenter after their arrival there. His brother, Richard, and other members of the family had gone out to Illinois in the mid to late 1840s, a few at a time. Richard’s son, Charles W. Crabtree arrived in Kane County, Illinois about 1844/45. He appears there during that influx of settlers that included Abraham Dobson (1843), Eliphalet Reed (1843), James Outhouse (1843), John Fillmore (1845), and Samuel Sharp (1845). These men were all from New Brunswick and had ties to the Crabtree family. Richard followed with sons Joseph, Arnold, and George, daughter Amy Beecham and her husband, Thomas, and nephew, William Crabtree all in 1849.

Like Richard, Elijah settled at Lodi, Illinois and remained there through 1865. There is a hint that he may have moved to Blackberry, in an adjacent township at some point during the Civil War. Priscilla Sutton Crabtree died on January 30, 1868, at or near Lodi in Virgil Township.

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