Person:Abner Gage Dunsmoor (1)

NAME: Also Dunsmore.

OCCUPATION: Merchant.

RESIDENCE: Dunsmoor, Abner G.; res[idence] n[orth]w[est] cor[ner] Fourth and Maine [sic]. Source: 1866 Quincy Directory Index Page.

BURIAL: Rockland Cemetery, Quincy, Adams County, Illinois, USA.

PERSONAL: Abner Gage Dunsmoor's second wife, Jane Miller, son Augustus and infant daughter all had typhoid fever in Quincy, Illinois, at the same time. Jane and the daughter died but Augustus lived. Abner sent word to his brother Hiel to come and take Augustus home with him to Malta, Morgan County, Ohio. Hiel then acted as his father and Augustus never saw his father, Abner, after he was two years old.

William Dunsmoor, grandson of Abner, wrote to Brent Gard in 1940 about the merchandising activities of the brothers Abner and Hiel in earlier years. He said they employed two men to build flatboats by hewing logs and whipsawing them into planks for the gunwhales. The boats were put together with pins so they could be taken apart at the end of the trip and the lumber sold. The boats were roofed with shingles. They hired two boatmen who had been to New Orleans to navigate the boat for them.

They cured meat all winter, smoked their own mutton, and bought more packed in barrels to take down the Mississippi to the towns along the river. On spring trips they took wheat, in the summer they took salt, flour, and other produce.

When Abner and Hiel dissolved their partnership Abner removed to Quincy, Illinois, where he went into business and became very prosperous, but his partners swindled him out of his money. Then he established a small grocery and was too busy tending his business to come back to Ohio for a visit.

-- From Nellie Ataline Gard, Ancestors and Descendants of Phineas and Polly (Gage) Dunsmoor, Marietta, Ohio, 1971, page 43.

Abner married Miss Emily E. Topliff, of Quincy, Ill. she, however, died soon after without issue, a few years after which he married a Miss Miller, of same place, by whom he had a son -- Augustus M. -- and, about two years after, a daughter, which latter, however, died in infancy, accompanying her mother. The father died in 1853 having been a merchant most of his life.

-- From History of Morgan County, Ohio, with Portraits and Biographical Sketches of some of its Pioneers and Prominent Men.  By Charles Robertson, M. D.  Revised and Extended by the Publishers.  Chicago:  L. H. Watkins & Co. 1886. Page 361.