My Genealogy Hound

ABEL S. GILES, a successful farmer, an active worker in the Baptist church and a prominent Prohibitionist in the town of Hanover, was born in New London county, Connecticut, September 3, 1818, and is a son of John and Betsey (Abel) Giles. His paternal grandfather, Thomas Giles, was a native of England, where he learned the trade of weaver. He came to Connecticut about the middle of the eighteenth century and was a soldier in the French and Indian war. He settled in New London county, where he followed weaving until his death. He married Bathsheba Harris, of Connecticut, by whom he had three sons and two daughters, one of which, Bathsheba, married a Mr. Staunton. One of the sons, Thomas, settled in Susquehanna, Pa., while another one was John Giles, the father of Abel S. Giles. John Giles was born in New London county, Connecticut, April 5, 1780, and died in Chautauqua county, New York, December 31, 1880. He was a farmer by occupation, a democrat in politics and a free-thinker in religious matters. He removed in June, 1823, to Delaware county where his wife, Betsey (Abel) Giles, died in 1844. They had three children: Edwin, a farmer, who resides with his son, Edward, in Nebraska; Austin, who with all his family is now dead; and Abel S.

Abel S. Giles received his education in the early common schools of Delaware county, and in 1844, came to the town of Sheridan, Chautauqua county, where he purchased a farm of one hundred and twenty-five acres of land which he cultivated until 1857, when he disposed of it and bought a farm of one hundred acres in the town of Hanover. On the 1st of April, 1839, he united with the Baptist church, in which he has been a deacon thirty years, and has always been an influential member and active worker. He has been successively in politics, a democrat, abolitionist, republican and prohibitionist. He has always had the courage of his convictions and dared to stand with the minority during the last years of African slavery; while to-day he stands courageously for prohibition as he ever did for the abolition of human servitude.

On April 10, 1844, he married Sarah Ann Stilson, a daughter of Amos Stilson, of Delaware county, N. Y. To Mr. and Mrs. Giles have been born six children, two sons and four daughters: Mary, wife of Edwin Downer, a farmer of Hanover; Nancy, (dead); Seymour, who resides in Dunkirk and is working in the Brooks Locomotive works; Julia, who married Hiram Calhoun, lives at Forestville, where he is engaged in farming; a daughter who married S. C. Albratt and Frank Giles living in Sheridan.