Santa Clara County
Biographies
GEORGE E. ABEL
native of Milpitas, California
Surnames: Mulhern, Staunton, Melarkey,
Staunton, Keating
A very successful and influential rancher who has remained in the vicinity of
his birth and become more and more identified with that region is George E.
Abel, a native of Milpitas, where he was born on January 3, 1882, a son of Henry
and Margaret (Mulhern) Abel. In pioneer days, Henry Abel set out from Wisconsin
for California, and he chose Milpitas as the best place in which to found family
and fortune. He became a retail meat-dealer, and continued to that important
trade for forty years. His shop stood on the same spot on which now stands the
home of our subject on the main street of Milpitas, south of the Catholic
Church. When he quit his butcher shop and business, Mr. Abel went in to farming,
and he acquired a farm of 500 acres on the Trimble Road, southwest of Milpitas.
Mr. and Mrs. Abel had a family of four children, and our subject was the
youngest. William H., the first-born, resides on the Abel ranch in Nevada, near
Winnemucca. The daughter, Miss. H. Gertrude, lives at Milpitas. Arthur F. Abel
is on the same stock-farm with his brother William. Henry Abel was an active
member of the school board in Milpitas, and in that capacity served his fellow
citizens faithfully.
George E. Abel attended the public schools in Milpitas, and then pursued a
general course at the Santa Clara College, spending about fifteen years, in the
meantime, with his father in the butcher business, and then following his father
to the ranch. Henry Abel passed away on January 29, 1917, four years (ed note-
maybe meant four months?) after the death, on September 29, of his devoted wife,
and since his death, George Abel has been managing the Milpitas portion of the
Abel estate. The 500 acres are devoted to grain, hay, vegetables, and fruit,
thirty-five acres being in pears, and the ranch is irrigated by artesian wells.
While at Winnemucca, Nev., George Abel was married to Miss May Staunton, the
ceremony taking place on September 29, 1914. The bride was the daughter of
Michael and Jennie (Melarkey), her father was one of Nevada's earliest pioneers
who mined for years throughout California and Nevada, and later became a
merchant in the Sage Brush State. They had four children, Michael D.; Edward W;
May and another daughter, Josephine, who became Mrs. T. P. Keating, of San
Francisco. Mrs. Abel attended the public schools at Winnemucca, and later the
Alameda high school, and finished her studies at Mills College, in Oakland. Two
children have blessed the union of Mr. and Mrs. Abel, George Staunton and
Margaret. The family attend the Roman Catholic Church at Milpitas, and in that
town recently Mr. and Mrs. Abel built their attractive home. In national
politics a Republican , he is a member of Knights of Columbus of San Jose, and a
charter member of the lodge.
Transcribed by Carolyn Feroben, from Eugene T. Sawyers' History of Santa Clara
County, California, published by Historic Record Co. , 1922. page 1102