52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
I don't know all the details of her life, but I choose Lydia Anna Carr Caylor Burrell Baxter for this one. She is my great-great-grandmother. My mom's dad's dad's mother.
She was born on October 15, 1845, in Jefferson, Pennsylvania, United States, to Ebenezer Ira Carr and Juliette Barnett.
She was married three times and had six children. Her first husband, David Caylor, died. She had a son, David, with him. Her second husband was William Burrell. They had five children William, Walter, Bertha, Blanche and Lulu. William apparently abandoned the family by 1885, when Lulu was a baby. Lydia filed for divorce in 1894 and married John Baxter in 1895.
In the 1885 Iowa state census, Lydia is listed with her children and four other individuals. I'm guessing she was hosting boarders in order to support her family. She is listed as a widow, but William was still alive.
The four individuals are John Baxter (whom she later married), Fred and Minne Hagnon, and Dora Backard. Baxter was born in Canada and the Hagnons and Backard were born in Germany.
By 1894, Lydia's family had moved to northwestern Iowa. Her children William and Blanche both died of consumption. She filed for and was granted a divorce from William Burrell. She married John Baxter the following year and William married two or three more times.
Lydia's son David Caylor also died before her, on May 21, 1912.
I'm not being as precise as I could like because I have records stored on a computer I can't get to start up and I'm not able to find the records online that I know I have found before.
Anyway, my admiration is for the hardships she endured, losing two husbands (death and abandonment/divorce) and three children. Yet, she kept going.
