Abraham was born on April 12, 1767, in Pennsylvania. He is listed in the 1790 Census as residing at Strasburg Township, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania with a family consisting of one male below 16 years of age and four females. He was on the tax list at Strasburg in 1802 but was receiving mail in Paradise, a short distance away, in 1843. He is said to have been about five feet, six inches in height and to weigh about 160 pounds. During his later years he must have been in poor financial circumstances, since his son, Martin, found it necessary to postpone his trip to Nauvoo while he built a home for Abraham. Abraham and Esther had eleven children according to the Ancestral File. Abraham wrote a letter to his son Martin which is published in the Newbern Butt book cited above on page 4. In the letter, written in 1843, he mentions that "times are very hard here and has been hard with the poor people all winter. The richest farmers are breaking up and this stops all kind of trade. John R. Montgomery is busted and a great many others like him has gone all to nothing. The poor and them that are in a middling circumstances cannot get a days work and if they do, no money to pay, nor hardly get grain or trade."

Abraham's wife, Esther Franks, is said to have Welsh blood in her lineage.

See Photo.

SOURCES: Bushman Family History. Also from Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, the births and marriage of Abraham and Esther. The Bushman Family by Newbern I. Butt.  FHL 170383, page 454.