Notes for Henry** Abel: Henry Abel (b. May 02, 1819, d. November 25, 1889) Henry Abel (son of Henry Abel and Anna Elisabeth)104 was born May 02, 1819 in Ebbersherim, Bavaria, Germany104, and died November 25, 1889 in Lee County, Iowa104. He married (1) Elizabeth Amidden on July 14, 1846105. He married (2) Christine Maria Fett on May 20, 1847 in Donnellson, Iowa106, 107, daughter of John August Fett and Anne Elizabeth Lapp.
Notes for Henry Abel: HENRY ABEL History of Lee Co., Iowa 1879 Henry Abel, farmer, section 34, P.O. Franklin Center; son of Henry and Elizabeth Abel; born May 2, 1819, in Bavaria, Germany. Emigrated with his parents to the United States in the fall of 1832, stopped in Franklin Ohio, and thence to Lee County, Iowa in the fall of 1836, locating in the West Point township, and the same winter engaged to Levi Moffit to run the Augusta Mills, where he remained for three years. He and his father are the first millers in Lee County; their customers frequently came to the mill from a distance of 75 to a hundred miles, and camping out, and sometimes having to wait three and four weeks for their grists to be ground; since leaving the mills at Augusta he has devoted his time to farming, with the exception of one season steam-boating on the Mississippi, and one winter running the Farmington Mills. Mr. Abel was the first person who discovered the dead bodies of Leiza and Miller, who were murdered by the Hodges brothers; he carried the first news to West Point and Fort Madison. That was the first murder committed in Lee County. Mr. Abel served his township, as trustee and was also candidate for state representative in the fall of 1876. He married Miss Christine Fett, of this county, May 20, 1847. She was born in Hessen Darmstadt, Germany on May 1833; came to Ohio in 1837 and to Lee County in 1845. They had five children; Elizabeth, born 14 May 1849; John born 25 October 1851; Henry born 27 March 1853; David born 3 June 1857; Theodore Michael born 7 July 1859. Mr Abel came to his present farm in 1852. His father was a soldier under Napoleon Bonaparte, and died in West Point township in 1874, in his 87th year, and Mother in the same township in 1868. Mr. Abel and family are members of the Evangelical Church. Politics, Republican.
OBITUARY HENRY ABEL
HENRY ABEL was born in Ebbersherim, Bavaria, Germany. He and his parents came to Canton, Ohio in the year 1832 and lived there three years. In 1836 they crossed the Mississippi river at Fort Madison, on a horse Ferry, and preceded to Franklin township, where they settled and have lived ever since. Mr. Abel was acquainted with Blackhawk. He and family had Blackhawk and his tribe for neighbors for nearly two years. For the first two years Henry worked in the Moffitt Mill, at Augusta, on the skunk river and helped largely to support his parents. In 1847 he was united in marriage to Christine Fett. Mr. Abel was always healthy up to 1885, when he was struck with palsy and lame and ailing till 1887, when he fell and broke his thigh and from that time was confined to his bed and chair till the time of his death, Nov, 25th, 1889. He was born in 1819, and lived 70 years and 6 months. He was buried in Franklin Cemetery. ( 2nd row marker 16 from west side) He was one if the leading men to start the Pioneer and Old Settlers organization in Lee County. He was one of our best citizens and pioneers.
THE MURDER OF MILLER AND LEIZA History of Lee County 1879 page 470 About midnight of Saturday, the 10th day of May, 1845, Jacob Abel ( Jacob Henry Abel), who lived about three miles southwest of West Point, came to the farm residence of Col. William Patterson, about half a mile south of that village, with the intelligence that his neighbors, John Miller, a Mennonite preacher, and Henry Leiza, his son-in-law, had been murdered with in the last hour. Col. Patterson accompanied Abel to West Point, where the alarm was given. Sheriff Estes was called up and in a short time the officer, Col. Patterson and several other gentlemen were on their way to the bloody scene, and arrived there a little before daylight. A most horrible sight was presented. "Old man Miller" ( say Col. Reid, in his "Sketches and Anecdotes of the Old Settlers and New-comers," heretofore quoted), "was found just in front of the door, lying dead, stabbed through the heart by a big bowie-knife, and his bloodless face upturned, looked from his open, glassy eyes with an excited stare upon them, like that of a soldier dying in the midst of a charge. A little deep, worn path, leading from the house to the smoke-house, was filled with his heart's blood, which had flowed into it from the place where he had fallen. He was a brave man, had been a soldier, who had seen service in Germany, and died fighting for his life in the midst of excitement. Leiza was severely wounded, but was not yet dead. The door, through which was a fresh bullet-hole, was yet spattered with blood. The last shot fired by the murderers passed through that door, and striking him under the shoulder blade, perpetrated a vital part, and internal hemorrhage caused death; but his skull was also fractured by the cut of a knife. He too, had resisted, and fought manfully. He was a stout and powerful young man, in the prime of life. Had the other cowardly son-in-law, Jacob Risser, come to the rescue, the murderers and assassins would had been defeated and repulsed. But he covered up his head in bed while the fight went on, as he laid still in one corner of the cabin, and trembling with fright, let his father-in-law and brother-in-law be murdered. Dr. Sala was sent for, but pronounced the wounds of Leiza necessarily fatal.
MADISONIA, DEMOCRAT PAPER FORT MADISON,IOWA 29 JULY 1872
Like other pioneers, Henry Abel who came to Lee County from Bavaria with his parents in 1838, never tired of telling about those early years. "I was 13 when we settled on our claim near West Point." he often said. "In the old country father had fought under Napoleon and the years had sure taken the starch out of Germany and all the rest of Europe. Father was having a hard time making ends meet and the future didn't look very good." "We kept getting letters from old friends who had gone to America, telling us what a wonderful country it was--no spending years in the army, plenty of land for everyone, You're a miller, they'd say in their letters to father, and this new country needs millers for everyone has growing corn that has to be ground, You'd have no trouble finding work." "Well, mother and father talked it over and decided that we'd go to America. We sailed the very next week to New York. From there we went to Franklin County, PA, where some folks we know were living. We spent the winter there then moved out to Ohio which father had heard was still being settled." "When we got to Ohio we found that it was already pretty filled up and father said he wanted to go farther west to the frontier. But he got a job as a miller till the Iowa territory opened up, and then we came to Lee County." "We found Lee County frontier for sure. Every man was building, felling trees, clearing land and trying to get in a crop to live on and his family was helping him. "Father heard that a man named Levi Moffitt needed a miller bad. I guess he could have danced for joy when father came and asked him for a job. I got hired, too, as father's assistant." "Moffitt's mill was a mighty busy place. Pioneers came from 50 miles away with their corn to be ground; there were so many they camped in a grove of trees not far from the mill and waited for their turns. Some had to wait nearly a month before they got their gist. Often we has to wake up a man in the middle if the night for his turn, for the mill ran day and night." "The settlers didn't mind for they had a good time fishing in the river, racing horses, wrestling, playing jokes on each other and just visiting." "When father felt the time was right, we quit Moffitt and returned to our claim, Father stayed there, after that and so did I except for one season when I went steam boating on the Mississippi, and one winter when I was in charge of the flour mill at Farmington." Henry Abel married Charistine Felt (Christine Fett) in 1847. Like himself, she was a native of Germany. They had five children, Elizabeth, John, Henry Jr., David and Michael. Henry Abel is also remembered by historians as the man who discovered the bodies of the Mennonite preacher, Miller and his son-on-law, Leiza, murdered in 1845 in the cabin a few miles from West Point, the most sensational crime in early Lee County history. Abel called at the cabin around 10 o'clock at night and found Miller lying in front of the door stabbed through the heart. Leiza was sprawled inside the cabin, stabbed and shot. "I didn't stop to look for the murders." Abel said. "I ran to Col. Patterson's house about a half a mile south of West Point. While he rounded up a posse, I got a horse and rode to Fort Madison with the news." The Hodges brothers, William and Stephen, were convicted of the crime and were hanged from a scaffold built on the hillside in Burlington while thousands watched. The crime was discussed for generations and small through Henry Abel's part was in it, He was mentioned as the man who found the bodies and reported the crime.
More About Henry Abel: Burial: Franklin Cemetery, Franklin Iowa.108
More About Henry Abel and Elizabeth Amidden: Marriage: July 14, 1846109
More About Henry Abel and Christine Maria Fett: Marriage: May 20, 1847, Donnellson, Iowa.110, 111
Children of Henry Abel and Christine Maria Fett are: +Elizabeth Abel, b. May 14, 1849, West Point,Lee County, Iowa112, d. March 13, 1916, Lee County, Iowa113, 114, 114. +John Abel, b. October 25, 1851, Lee County, Iowa115, d. June 07, 1912, Lee County, Iowa115. +Henry Jr Abel, b. March 27, 1853, Franklin, Lee County, Iowa115, 116, d. March 09, 1928, Lee County, Iowa117, 118. +David Abel, b. June 03, 1857, Franklin, Lee Co., Iowa119, 120, d. May 15, 1933, Donnellson, Lee C., Iowa121, 122, 122. +Theodore Michael Abel, b. July 07, 1859, Donnellson, Lee Co., Iowa123, 124, d. August 02, 1939, Donnellson, Lee Co., Iowa125, 126.
Children of Henry** Abel and Christine Maria Fett are:
Henry** Abel (b. May 02, 1819, d. November 25, 1889)
Notes for Henry** Abel: