Abbe reached his staked claim in April and immediately cleared the land around the creek with a team of oxen and a breaking plow to cut the prairie sod.
Later that fall he built a large double log house with three rooms and an upstairs sleeping loft reached by an inside ladder.
In 1838, Abbe sent two other early settlers, Robert Ellis and Philip Hull, to Muscatine (a trek of over 50 miles by a recent Google Maps [2] directions) for provisions with his last $15.
William Abbe's cabin was a popular gathering place for the settlers and immigrants of early Linn County.
Strangers could always find a good meal and a place to stay with William and Mary Abbe.
Telling of their pioneer life, she recalled: "Of course we had men come in such as horse thieves, and my father had some of them chained up in one of our rooms for safekeeping until they could be tried, as there was no jail for some time in Linn County."
[1] Abbe also held the government contracts for the delivery of meat and provisions to the Winnebago Agency at Fort Atkinson and to the troops at Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin.
For many years, he was the only person in the county who had a ready supply of money and he loaned it freely to his friends for them to purchase claims.
In 1854, before he could return to Iowa to bring his family to California, Abbe died at age 54.