Born: December 26, 1813, Scotch Plains, New Jersey.
Died: May 3, 1891, at the Hotel Del Monte, near Monterey, California.
Buried: Willow Grove Cemetery, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Abraham was the son of Dennis Coles and Katrina (Catherine) Van Duersen, husband of Caroline Elizabeth Ackerman (married 1842), and father of Emilie Coles.
Educated by his parents initially, he began teaching Latin and Greek in Plainfield, New Jersey, around 1830.
He attended the University of the City of New York; the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York; and the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1835. He began practicing medicine in Newark, New Jersey, in 1836.
Coles was well a traveled man, visiting Europe several times, and studied both ancient and modern languages. He was one of the founders of the Newark, New Jersey, library, and the New Jersey Historical Society, and served on the Newark Board of Education for 12 years. In 1866, he became president of the New Jersey Medical Society.
Coles received several academic degrees, including an AM from Rutgers College, New Brunswick, New Jersey; a PhD from Lewisburg University (now Bucknell) (1860); and an LLD from Princeton University, New Jersey (1871)