Abigail E. Sheets was born in 1848 to carpenter/farmer Martin B. and Eliza Ann Sheets in Madison, Ohio, being one of their three children. She married Albert Cogswell in 1863 and they had a son Henry by 1865. They were living in Otsego, Michigan in 1870, but the marriage did not last. Albert and Abigail divorced by 1875 and Albert married Mary Ann Perry.
In 1880, Abigail was a dressmaker living in Lansing, Michigan. Both she and her family were involved with Spiritualism. In 1881, her father, Martin, was known as a professor of clairvoyance and magnetism in town. Abigail worked at camp Onset in the late 1880s. In1895, her father, Mr. M. B. Sheets of Grand Ledge, judged an essay writing contest entitled: “What Good Has Spiritualism Done,” which was published in the Progressive Thinker.
By 1891, the Sheets and family were living in Grand Ledge, a well-known Spiritualist camp. Abigail was listed as Mrs. Abbie E. Sheets, medium, for the 1893 First National Delegate Convention of Spiritualists of the United States in Chicago. She was also a trustee at Haslett Park Camp. In 1895 and 1896 she was vice president of the Michigan State Spiritualist Association and president of the Grand Ledge Spiritualist Camp association from 1894 until 1904.
The Banner of Light, 14 November 1896, published a summary of her talk at the Boston Spiritual Temple entitled: “What can you tell of reincarnation?” During her talk, she said, “In this sense we may feel that we have lived before. But though we passed to spirit-life many centuries ago from the far-away land of the Orient, in all our journeyings through the higher realms we have never met a spirit that proved to our satisfaction that he ever lived in a human body upon the earth-plane but once in his march from the lower to the higher kingdom. If other spirits have lived upon the earth-plane many times we have not learned of the fact to our satisfaction.”
The late 1890s were a busy time for Abigail. She lectured and gave public addresses at Grand Ledge; Lake Helen, Florida; and the Michigan state convention in 1897. She was a state delegate at the convention the following year.
Abigail’s father died in1898 at Grand Ledge, but she and her mother remained there. Her lectures continued with engagements at the Owosso, Michigan Spiritualist Society and at Sturgis, Michigan at the Free or Spiritualist Church. In 1903, she spoke in Indianapolis. When she attended the 1908 Grand Ledge Spiritualist Camp, the following was published: “The opening week Mrs. Abbie Sheets filled the entire week’s engagements giving her highly Spiritual addresses to the entire satisfaction of her listeners.”
Abigail spoke to the Lansing First Society of Spiritualists, and officiated funeral services. By 1910 she was living alone at Grand Ledge and eventually moved to California to be near her son. She died in 1915 in Glendale, California and was buried near her ex-husband, Albert, who died in 1914 and eventually her son, Henry, who died in 1925. A Michigan obituary said, “Mrs. Abbie Sheets for 30 years a resident of this city, until she went to California, last August, passed away Saturday at the home of her son, Henry Cogswell.”