Elias was born in Salisbury Township, Pennsylvania. He went to California because his girl friend, Katie Bowers, left Pennsylvania to live with her uncle in California. She was pregnant and, in shame, went to California to have her baby. She didn't tell Elias she was pregnant. He followed her to California and although they got married, they never did live together as husband and wife. Katie lived with her mother and her baby Bertha in her uncle's house. Elias was permitted to live in a little shanty in the back yard. Little Bertha used to come out and visit him in his little house, but the marriage didn't work out. Elias was working in a livery stable in Azusa when he met Clarissa May Heckman. She had come to California from Illinois when she was 21. She had an adventuresome spirit and a fiance back home who lent her the money. As fate would have it, she met Elias, married him in 1896, and had to scrimp to repay her former fiance. They first lived next door to the Methodist parsonage in Azusa. It was a nice house that Elias had built with a big garden. Elias worked for the McNeil ranch doing irrigation and cultivating. They made a few moves to other houses and then bought ten acres of land out in the country in Covina. He hoped that he could stop working for other's orange ranches and build a home on his own land. He would take the family on drives to visit the land on Sundays and dream. Unfortunately he died when he was 41, leaving a young family of three daughters and a widow. His grave marker is the only stone in the shape of a tree in Oakdale Cemetery. He paid money into the Woodmen of the World for insurance to pay for this imposing marker. The insurance money also provided money for Clarissa to have a home built on their land in Covina. Unfortunately Elias wasn't alive to enjoy it.