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NAVIGATION
Michigan
Histories
Kalamazoo County
Biographies
Online Biographies
Illinois
Histories
Also see [Railway Officials in America 1906]
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ABRAM I. SHAVER, whose name so often appears in Territorial laws, was one of the first settlers in the county,
and was prominently associated with many of the initial events in its history. He was born in New Jersey March
2, 1798. But little is known of his history prior to his emigration to Kalamazoo County. He married, in Crawford
Co., Ohio, in 1823, Miss Sarah Bishop, mother of th& first white child born in the county.- Mrs. Calista Hicks,
of Prairie Ronde. He settled in Prairie Ronde on Christmas day, 1828, and erected a log cabin fourteen by twenty-eight
feet, with a fireplace in each end, as he said, to "hit the wind by a change from one to the other."
He turned the first furrow plowed in the county, in April, 1829, with a plow which bad a wooden mould-board, and,
during the season, he plowed for himself and others eighty two acres. The meeting for the organization of the town
of Brady, which comprised the entire county of Kalamazoo, and all the country north attached to the county, was
held at his house. In 1830 he was elected one of the first school commissioners in the county, and he always manifested
a lively interest in educational matters. Mr. Shaver was an eccentric man, and possessed
of a broad and pecnliar humpr. He employed a dialect of his own, and always succeeded in interesting those who
listened to his stories and caricatures. Bnt whatever eccentricities or foibles he may have possessed, he had certainly
bluff and hearty ways, not without generosity and hospitality, which rendered him an acceptable neighbor and friend.
In all the early trials incident to the settlement of a new country, none took a more active part than he; and
no name will stand out more conspicuously in the history of Prairie Ronde than his.
Henry Bishop speaks of Mrs. Shaver “as the best pattern of a pioneer woman he ever became acquainted with. She
spun, wove, and made the clothing for both the male and female portions of the family; always at home and always
at work, ever ready and willing to share what she had with her more needy neighbor, and one who seemed contented
with what women nowadays would look upon as a great hardship.” They reared a family of eight ehildren,—Mary B.,
wife of G. G. Crose; Calista, now Mrs. Hicks, of Prairie Ronde; Bruce; Robert E.; Uretta, wife of Henry Zetter;
Ulysses; Marion, wife of James Pomeroy; and Josephine, wife of Wm. Fields. (See history of Prairie Ronde Township.)
FROM:
History of Kalamazoo County, Michigan
With Illistrations and Biographical Sketches
of its Men and Pioneers.
Everts & Abbott., Philadelphia 1880
Press of J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia.
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