Abigail Fellows is listed as a Westfield resident in this Census document from 1850.

Abigail Fellows seemed to be always on the cusp of history’s great comings and goings. It is part of why her story is so intriguing.

Abigail caught my attention in the first place as the only woman included in the biographical sketches of notable settlers in an early history of the town of Portland.

That short account barely tells us what she did and when, and yet her long-ago life whispered to my curiosity: Listen! This is a woman with a tale to tell.

But details of Abigail’s life are scarce. There are only a few hard facts about her to be found in historical records.

Abigail was born in 1785 in historic Dutchess County south of Albany when America itself was still aborning. There was no president of the United States, no Constitution. Those three great revolutionaries — George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson — had their presidencies yet before them.

Abigail was born too early to have profited from the women’s movement — she was old enough to have been Susan B. Anthony’s mother, after all. And yet there she is, the sole woman included with 247 prominent men given special mention in the Pioneer History of the Town of Portland by Dr. H.C. Taylor.

She earned a place in that 1873 publication because, at a time in the early 1800s when women were barely expected to cobble together two cogent thoughts, Abigail Fellows moved west with her 10 children to the still-primitive town of Portland, N.Y., where she bought and operated a farm and tavern.

But I am ahead of the story.

Abigail and Ezra Fellows settled into life in Stillwater in Saratoga County after their marriage in about 1804. In all, they would have 11 children.

Except for her baptism in the Congregational Church in Stillwater some 10 years later, I could find no details of their lives during those years.

We know for sure, though, that Abigail’s world collapsed in 1820. First she lost her infant son, James, in July. And then that autumn, her husband died.

A key to Abigail’s future was a lawsuit Ezra had filed against his father, two brothers and a brother-in-law for cheating Ezra out of his share from the sale of a farm.

Ezra had won the case but did not live to see it through the appeal. Abigail did. As administratrix of his estate, she stood firm for five years after Ezra died until the verdict was upheld by the state Court for the Correction of Errors. The award was $1,500, which, measured in purchasing power, was a lot of money.

If, as we might surmise, she had lost the affection and support of her in-laws after winning the lawsuit, the Widow Fellows would have been alone with those 10 children to care for.

She had the $1,500 though, and it gave her options.

We cannot overstate the gutsiness of what Abigail decided to do.

This was 1825, a time when the Industrial Revolution was unfolding in the relatively well-settled Saratoga County. Abigail’s parents and siblings had moved west some years before. And so 40-year-old Abigail turned away from the familiar and civilized surroundings of Stillwater and, with her 10 children, followed her parents to the western wilderness — to Chautauqua County.

According to old maps and Taylor’s history, the farm and tavern Abigail bought in Portland were just south of the hamlet between Webster and Ellicott roads. The tavern — which she operated first with her brother and then with her sons — was on Fay Street.

Abigail and her family took on the challenges of what must have been a physically hard life running the farm and tavern so that they could claim the great promise of America’s westward expansion: A new life.

But then, with vigor and righteousness, came the temperance movement. It faltered in the first few years in Portland. When the Second Great Awakening of religious fervor barreled up from southern Ohio and into Chautauqua County in 1831, temperance crusaders were invigorated anew. Onward they marched.

Abigail was again on the cusp of a social movement, this one attacking her business while appealing to her Christian soul. We do not know whether she was part of the religious fervor to cleanse Chautauqua County, or whether she could not stand against it. Whatever it was, the tavern was closed for good that year.

This is where I begin to run into a dead end while writing the narrative of Abigail’s life.

I found a record of her marriage to widower Abel Thompson of Stockton in 1828. However, by the 1830 census, she is listed as the head of household living in Portland under the name Abigail Thompson with her eight younger children.

We know from cemetery records that Abel died in 1831 and so we assume they had separated.

There is a reference in another record noting that Abigail quit Portland when she traded for a farm in Westfield in 1837. The 1840 census shows Abigail Thompson living there with three of her children.

By 1850, her 65th year, the census shows Abigail living alone on the farm in Westfield, but now listing herself as Abigail Fellows once again.

The last reference to Abigail that I could find was from 1857, the same year the Dred Scott decision shouldered the nation closer to the Civil War.

It was the year Abigail died.

And that is the end.

We have not yet turned up a diary or even any letters that Abigail might have written. It is as if we have no possibility of ever knowing the sorts of personal things that would give us insight into this singular and remarkable woman from our county’s early history.

Cristie Herbst is president of the Chautauqua County Historical Society and retired editor of The Post-Journal in Jamestown. Sources for this article include: Jim Boltz, former Portland historian; Pioneer History of the Town of Portland, Dr. H.C. Taylor, 1873; History of Saratoga County, Nathaniel Sylvester, 1878; History of Chautauqua County and Its People, 1921; Reports of Cases in the Court of Chancery, 1867; Fredonia Censor, 1828; Illustrated Historical Atlas of the County of Chautauqua, 1881.