Spooner, Elijah Allen

1811–1877

Elijah Allen Spooner was born on 11 April 1811 in Oakham, Worcester County, Massachusetts. His parents, Andrew and Sally (Adams) Spooner, were both born in Massachusetts and raised all of their nine children in Oakham.

On 19 May 1847, at the age of thirty-six, Elijah married twenty-year-old Nancy Judson Hodge. Elijah traveled to California two years later while Nancy remained at Novi, Oakland County, Michigan with the couple’s one-year-old son, Edward.

Elijah had returned to Michigan by mid-1853 as a daughter, Abbie Louise, was born in that state on 18 March 1854. Edward had passed away on 31 October 1852, however, while a second daughter, Hattie, only lived five months.

By 1857 the Spooner family had moved to the town of Walnut Creek in Brown County, Kansas. Elijah farmed, while Nancy kept house. Elijah also served as County Clerk, 1864–65, and was elected as a probate judge from 1864 to 1868.

Elijah passed away on 12 January 1877 at the age of sixty-five at Hiawatha, Kansas.

Bibliography

1860 Kansas Census (E.A. Spooners, Walnut Creek, BrownCounty, 027).

1870 Kansas Census (E.A. Spooner, Walnut Creek, BrownCounty, 652).

Cutler, William G. History of the State of Kansas. Atchison, KA: Atchison County Historical Society, 1976.

Hodge, Orlando John. Hodge Genealogy. Boston: Rockwell and Churchill Press, 1900.