FAMILY STACK

Excerpted from Crowell Manuscript by Elizabeth Crowell Kolb, daughter of Abner Buel Crowell:

Abner Buell Crowell came to California with his parents via the Isthmus of panama in 1855, sailing from New York. They settled in Yuba county, first in Fosters bar and later in Camptonville, and engaged in Placer mining. He worked in and about the mines until after his mother's death, when he returned to the east, clerked in his Uncle George's store in Peru, [Indiana], and attended school. When he was about 19 years old, he returned to California, coming overland by train, and taught school in Grangeville, then part of Tulare county but now in Kings county, boarding in the home of Capt. Peter Kanawyer, whose daughter he married. In about 1873 he purchased 160 acres of government land and began farming on the tract that is now known as the Crowell sub-division and is adjacent to Hanford. He and his wife lived on this farm until 1908, engaging principally in dairying. In 1908 his health failed and he retired and they moved to Oakland. They lived there until Mrs. Crowell's death, when he went to his daughter's home in Monterey.

He was raised to a Master Mason in Hanford Lodge No. 279, F. & A. M., 13 Sept. 1890. He was a trustee of the Hanford High School form the time the district was formed until 1908, and was for many years a trustee of the Hanford Grammar School.

Newspaper article indicated that he moved to Hanford in 1870.

On July 10, 1882, Abner and his sister, Mary Marilla (Crowell) Kennedy traveled to Hawaii. It can be deduced that the two were in Hawaii to see their estranged father, John Matthew Crowell, who had been missing, but showed up in California for a visit after having been gone for some time.