George E. Cabanis
George E. Cabanis was born on October 7, 1815, in Kentucky. His family moved to Sangamon County, Illinois, around 1822, and he served as a captain in the Black Hawk War. A eulogist later claimed that Cabanis and Abraham Lincoln were “fellow-workmen” who helped “build a flat-boat which Lincoln ran down the Ohio [River].”
He moved to New Diggings, Wisconsin, to prospect for lead, but he may have returned to Sangamon County soon afterward. He married Mary Ann Lanterman on December 31, 1836, and they had at least two children: Jasper, born around 1838; and James, born on December 25, 1838. They moved to Smelser, Wisconsin, around 1845. Cabanis worked as a carpenter, and by 1850, he owned $100 of personal property.
He supported the Republican Party, and he supported Lincoln in the presidential election of 1860. In August 1860, he wrote to Lincoln “as one of the families of your first acquaintance in old Sangamon.” Cabanis noted that his father had supported Lincoln in his earliest campaigns for political office, adding that “the old man is gone but He has left a son and 2 grand Sons to fill His place evry thing bids fair to be all right in Wisconsin.”
Cabanis attended a local party convention in September 1861. Local voters elected him to the state legislature in 1871, and he served on the committee on mining and smelting. By 1870, he owned $1,200 of real estate and $500 of personal property. He died of pneumonia in Smelser on February 4, 1892.
DATABASE CONTENT
| (4414) | Cabanis, George E. | 1815-10-07 | 1892-02-04 |
- Conflict Side: Union
- Role: Civilian
- Rank in:
- Rank out:
- Rank highest:
- Gender: Male
- Race: White
Documents - Records: 1
- (12232) [writer] ~ George E. Cabanis to Brother and Sister, 21 April 1861
People - Records: 4
- (4420) Cabanis, James Henry is the [child of] (4414) Cabanis, George E.
Places - Records: 2
Groups - Records: 1
- (3) [politician] ~ Republican Party
SOURCES
1840, 1850, 1860, and 1880 United States Federal Censuses, available from Ancestry.com; Illinois Compiled Marriages, 1791-1850, available from Ancestry.com; Wisconsin Death Records, 1959-2004, available from Ancestry.com; Grant County (WI) Witness, 19 September 1861; Chicago (IL) Tribune, 7 February 1892; Castello N. Holford, History of Grant County, Wisconsin (n.p., 1900); George E. Cabanis to Abraham Lincoln, 12 August 1860, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress
