My Genealogy Hound

CHAUNCEY ABBEY, president of the Fredonia National bank, is one of that honorable and distinctive class called “self-made” men, who have fought the battle of life to financial success by their own energy and skill. He was born in the town of Virgil, Cortland county, New York, April 1, 1815, and is a son of David and Hannah (Woods) Abbey. He is of New England ancestry, and his grandfathers, John Abbey and Nathan Woods, were both of English descent and served in the Continental armies during the Revolutionary struggle of the Thirteen Colonies for independence. His father, David Abbey, was a native of Bellows Falls, on the Connecticut river, in the State of Connecticut and married Hannah Woods, of Bennington, Vermont, after which he came to New York, where he finally settled in the town of Villanova (now Arkwright) in 1823. He was a farmer in moderate circumstances at the time of his death in 1876, when he was in the eighty-seventh year of his age.

Chauncey Abbey grew to manhood on the home farm and attended the ordinary schools of his neighborhood, in which he received a limited education the common-school branches excepting mathematics; in this science he became quite proficient. Leaving school he engaged in farming, which he followed successfully for sixty years on his Arkwright farm of one hundred and ninety-six acres. This farm he has, by persistent and intelligent effort, brought into a high state of cultivation and productiveness. He is one of the representative farmers in a county noted for its fertile farms and large crops. Besides general farming and grain raising he has engaged extensively for many years in stock-dealing. In the latter business his efforts has been rewarded with the same ample measure of success which has been his in all of his other business enterprises. In 1856 he and Stephen M. Clements, with others, were mainly instrumental in organizing the Fredonia bank which, in 1865, became the Fredonia National bank, of which Mr. Abbey has been president since 1882. He was a heavy stockholder and a prominent director in the old as well as the new bank, and in their management his good judgment and safe business methods added much to their uniform success and general prosperity. The Fredonia National bank has a capital of one hundred thousand dollars, with average deposits of five hundred thousand dollars and a surplus of forty thousand dollars. This bank is recognized as one of the best managed and most reliable banks in the State, and has the reputation of having never extended or skipped the time of any payment of its dividends. The bank has been constantly increasing its volume of business under the conservative, safe and reliable management of Mr. Abbey, whose business relations have brought him in contact with and secured for him the good will of the leading business men of western New York. The directors of this bank stand high as business men and financiers, and most of them, like Mr. Abbey, are identified with other important interests of the county.

He married Elizabeth Chase, who died, and then he united in marriage with Mrs. Esther A., the daughter of Judge Allen, of Tiowanda, this State. To his first union were born three children, one of whom, Ella E., is the wife of Hon. W. B. Hooker, member of Congress from the Thirty-fourth Congressional district of New York, whose sketch appears elsewhere in this volume.

In addition to his farm in the town of Arkwright he owns several valuable tracts of land in other parts of the county, and has a well-improved farm in Ohio, for which he paid ten thousand dollars. At an early age Mr. Abbey developed those business habits which became the foundation of his after success in life. He was slow and careful in the beginning of his business career, but daily widened out the sphere of his operations and eventually became a potent factor in the many business enterprises with which he is identified today.