Torrey, Eliza S.

Born: 1812-05-17 Hartland, Vermont

Died: 1871-XX-XX

Alternate name: Cabot

Eliza S. Cabot was raised in Vermont, but sometime before 1843, she moved to Petersburg, Illinois, to work as a teacher. While she was living in a rooming house there, Francis Regnier, an eccentric local doctor, accused her of having sex out of marriage. Eliza retained Abraham Lincoln and sued Regnier for slander. On September 12, 1844, between the time of the case in the Menard County Circuit Court and the appeal before the Illinois Supreme Court, she married Erastus C. Torrey in Whiteside County, Illinois. The couple moved to Windsor, Vermont, where they had two daughters, Mary and Nelly. From 1850-61, the family lived in Detroit. In 1861, the family lived in Washington, DC.

Gravestone, Congressional Cemetery, Washington, DC; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Whiteside County, 12 September 1844, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Benjamin W. Dwight, The History of the Descendants of John Dwight, of Dedham, Mass. (New York: John F. Trow & Son, 1874), 2:597-99; William Arba Ellis, ed., Norwich University, 1819-1911: Her History, Her Graduates, Her Roll of Honor (Montpelier, VT: Capital City Press, 1911), 2:238; Dale Thomas, Lincoln's Old Friends of Menard County Illinois (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2012), 102-3; Regnier v. Cabot & Torrey, Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), http://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org.