Will the Real Abigail Please Stand Up

Every time we are at an event someone asks me, "Are you Anna or Abigail?"  The truth is that I am Abigail, and at the same time I am neither.  You see, when I am acting as a living historian I take the name of "Abigail", since "Kim" is not very period correct.  There was, however, a real "Abigail", and today I would like to introduce you to her. 

Her real name was Abigail Champney Welton.  She was my great, great, great grandmother (that's a lot of "greats").  She was born in 1812 and lived most of her life in Middlebury Township, Wyoming County, New York.  She married her husband, John H. Welton on October 13, 1833 in Covington, NY in a Baptist Church.  She was illiterate and bore 7 or 8 children.  After John died in 1858, she was left without any means of supporting herself.

Her young son, Charles, went to work for various local farmers where he was paid in produce, corn, meat, wood, and on a rare occasion, cash. Then came the Civil War.  In 1862 Charles, then 15 years old enlisted in the 136th New York infantry.  For his enlistment Charles received a bounty from the state, of which he gave his mother $20.00, and his brother-in-law, Maurice Nelan $20.00 to distribute to his mother as needed.  He also gave directions for Maurice to collect his $100.00 town bounty to hold for Abigail.  By enlisting, Charles had found a way to support his mother.  He never returned.  On May 15, 1864 he was shot at the Battle of Resaca and died.  He was 17.

After his death Abigail filed for a pension since her son was her sole provider.  A pension of $8.00 a month was granted to her.  Later in life she moved in with her daughter and son-in-law, Maurice and Jane Nelan.  She died in 1874. 

I have no pictures of her, but I can imagine a thin woman with weathered hands and face dressed in a well-worn and patched prairie type dress.  My great grandfather remembers her sitting at her spinning wheel spinning the wool from her son-in-law's sheep into yarn.  Work was no stranger to her.  She lived in a time when women had few opportunities to earn a living.  Denied of education and destitute, she had her faith in God and the resolve to do what needed to be done to survive and raise her remaining children.