Arriving in California as a young child, she contributed to the success of business, personal, literary, and political affairs in San Francisco.

Jacob Green Jackson, Krebs-Wilkins became the president and active manager of Caspar Lumber Company, in Mendocino County.

[2] As a young child, with her mother, Abbie came around Cape Horn, landing in San Francisco, at the corner of Montgomery and Washington streets, where she joined her father, Jacob G. Jackson, who had come two years earlier.

[2] Later, she returned East and graduated from a young ladies' seminary, an adjunct to Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.

The experience was destined to serve her well when, following his death, she inherited his business, the Caspar Lumber Company, in Mendocino County, with an office in San Francisco.

[5] Those first years were discouraging and difficult as the volume was small, credit poor, prices low, and competition keen.

[6] She assisted in many constructive movements to improve the trade, being associated with other California lumber operators in creating a market in the Eastern states for the excess supply of redwood.

She was twice president of the Pacific Coast Press Women's Association, one of the founders of the California Club, senior regent of the Puerta del Oro chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution,[7] national secretary of the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic, grand matron of the Eastern Star in California, and director of the women's board of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition.

She regarded the Eastern Star as the forerunner of women's clubs in California, in many of which she was an active member, whether of social, literary, political, or civic nature.

[2] Because of her long experience in business and social organizations, Krebs-Wilkins was fully qualified for participation in that new department of women's work opened by suffrage.

She was president of the Taft Club in San Francisco, served on the Republican County Central Committee, and was in charge of the women's department during the campaign.