Source: History of Bureau County, Illinois
H. C. Bradsby, Editor
Chicago: World Publishing Company, 1885

Transcribed by: Denise McLoughlin
Tampico Area Historical Society
www.tampicohistoricalsociety.citymax.com

Page 517

ELISHA FASSETT * Carson City, Colorado. This old pioneer of Bureau County was born October 20, 1792, in Fitzwilliam, N. H. He is yet living in Colorado, and only as late as last summer gladdened the hearts of his relatives and man friends by visiting Bureau County, where a warm welcome awaits him at all times. He has now passed his four score and ten, and although time has dealt gently with him and bids fair to let him become a centenarian, yet many of his Bureau County pioneer friends, when they pressed his hand in sad farewell, felt that the shadows of life were gathering around him, and that it might be the last time they looked into his kindly eyes. The following is a brief sketch of his life: He was a cooper and farmer in his native State, where he was married to Lovina Angier, a daughter of Abel Angier, and a native of the above place. She died in Lamoille August 1, 1837; she was the mother of Mrs. Nancy Frank, Mrs. Rosilla Phelps and Elisha W. Fasssett. Our subject, accompanied by his family, Abel Angier and sons, Reuben and Philip Angier, Cyrus Stone and Louis Monroe, who were sons-in-law of Abel Angier, all came to Putnam, now Bureau County, Ill. in June, 1835. They settled in the northeast part of the county, where Abel Angier's two sons-in-law, Jonathan Holbrook and Moses Bowen resided, who had come there in July, 1834, and settled in the vicinity of what is now Lamoille. Elisha Fassett bough a claim of Leonard Roth, for $350. Roth keeping half the claim. Mr. and Mrs. Fassett found none of the comforts of an Eastern home in the new country and bravely endured the privations of pioneer life. They would go thirty miles to Green's Mill on the Illinois River, and at one time, in 1835, were compelled to camp out in a cold night on the prairie near Lost Grove. Mr. Fassett farmed in Bureau County till 1849, when he went to California, where he mined and merchandised. Before going to California he was married a second time to Mrs. Mary J. Cole (nee Jenkins), now deceased. In 1851 he returned to Bureau County, where he resided many years and eventually went ot Carson City, Colo., where his two daughters reside, and which is now his home. There he has been very successful in various occupations connected with mining, and is a shrewd business man in spite of his years.