Anna Fuller Pease (1775-Aft. 1850)

Early Life

Anna Fuller was born on 3 June 1775 in Connecticut. Her parents have not yet been reliably identified, and little is known about her childhood.On 3 December 1795, twenty-year-old Anna married Elijah Pease in Stafford, Connecticut. Over the next twenty-five years, they had five sons. For the first decades of their marriage, Anna and Elijah remained in Connecticut. Their sons, however, came of age during a period when families throughout New England were increasingly looking west for affordable land and new opportunities.Eventually, that westward movement would carry Anna with them.

Why She Left

The Pease family’s migration unfolded gradually. Their oldest son, William, moved to Madison County, New York, after his marriage in 1819. Their second son, James, settled in Napoli—later Cold Spring—in Cattaraugus County by the mid-1820s. Other members of the family followed. Eventually Anna and Elijah also moved to the Cold Spring area, where several of their sons lived nearby.No surviving record tells us how Anna felt about these moves or what role she played in deciding to make them. But by the time the family considered another migration—to Illinois—Anna had already spent decades watching her children establish lives farther and farther west.In 1844, rather than remain in New York while several of their sons moved again, Anna and Elijah went with them.

Journey to Illinois

The Peases left western New York for Kane County, Illinois, in 1844. The major transportation corridor available to migrants from western New York: travel to the Erie Canal, canal boat to Buffalo, water transportation across the Great Lakes toward Chicago, and then wagon travel into the northern Illinois prairie.For a younger family, such a journey would have been demanding. Anna was about sixty-nine years old. Yet she undertook the journey and began another life in a place very different from the settled New England communities of her youth.

Building a Life in Illinois

Anna and Elijah settled near several of their sons in Plato Township, Kane County. Their sons David and Mason acquired federal land, while James also lived nearby. Once again, the Peases established the kind of clustered family settlement they had created in western New York.By 1850, Anna was seventy-five and Elijah eighty. The census shows them living next door to David and Mason, with James nearby.For Anna, proximity to her adult children may have been particularly important at this stage of life. It also meant that after decades of raising sons who repeatedly moved toward new opportunities, she remained physically part of the family community they had created.The 1850 census is the last confirmed record of Anna and Elijah. No reliable death or burial record for Anna has been found. The available evidence indicates that she was living in Plato after 1850, and she likely died there.

Why This Story Matters

Anna’s story reminds us that migration at older ages was not exclusively a male experience. Elijah’s decision to move at about seventy-four is remarkable, but Anna made the journey too. At sixty-nine, she left a familiar home, traveled hundreds of miles, and adapted once again to a new community.Her life therefore gives us a different perspective on the Pease family’s celebrated pattern of purposeful movement. Every opportunity gained through migration also required someone to leave a home behind and make another one. Anna Fuller did that more than once—and she was still doing it as she approached seventy.

Source Documents

The research documents for the Pease 1844 migration story:

• Biographical Sketch (PDF)
• Migration to Illinois (PDF)
• Genealogical Summary and Children (PDF)
• Legacy (PDF)

Related Reading

• Pease, Elijah
• Pease Migration Story
• Paths to Illinois, Volume II The Davis Family Story
• Migration Timeline of all sixteen families
• Ancestors & Surnames index

My Blog and Newsletter have additional stories and research related to the Pease family.