Motherless and fatherless, in repeated patterns. It took me a while to figure this all out. At first it was just a mass of confusion but, by documenting bits here and there I finally saw the pattern. Here it is:
Lillian Mary Joslyn, daughter of Wilmot Joslyn & Mary Shoecraft
- Lillian Mary Joslyn (sometimes Joslin) (1890-1946)
- Lillian’s mother: Mary Shoecraft (1849-1890)
- Lillian’s grandmother: Mary Polly Farrington (1819-1849)
Mary Farrington married Daniel Shoecraft in 1848. She died when her daughter Mary was 6 weeks old. Baby Mary was raised by her maternal grandparents.
Mary Shoecraft married Wilmot Joslyn in 1870. She died when her daughter Lillian was 6 weeks old. Wilmot remarried about 18 months later. Wilmot & his bride had been married two weeks when when a train struck their carriage and they were both killed. It was 1892 and Lillian was just 21 months old.
Both of Lillian’s grandmothers were dead. Her paternal grandfather was quite ill and died a year later. Four years after that her maternal grandfather, who was living in Kansas, drowned when the carriage he was riding in overturned in a deep stream. I can’t find Lillian on a 1900 census so I don’t know where she was living and I’ve found no information about where or how she was raised.
In 1904, when she was just 14, Lillian married Martin B Miller and their daughter Grace was born 10 months later. 14 months after that Martin was killed when he was jumping from a train. One month later Grace was legally adopted by her paternal grandparents.
22 months after that, in 1908 at the age of 18, Lillian married Charles W Van Buren. They had two sons: Robert & Raymond. When their younger son was 1 month old, Charles died of pneumonia. Their 1-year-old son went to live with his paternal grandparents and the infant stayed with her.
Charles Van Buren had married Goldie E Taylor at the end of 1904 & they had a son, Warren Wilber, born in Dec 1906. Goldie died 11 weeks later and Warren was raised by his widowed maternal grandmother.
Lillian married Lewis Ashbel Orton when Raymond was 3 & they remained married until her death at age 56. They had two sons: Charles Lewis and Edward William.
During WWII, her sons Raymond Van Buren & Edward Orton were POWs in Germany. Raymond came home in August 1945 & Edward at the end of October.
Edward met an early end. On 4 Jul 1957, at age 37, he died when the car he was driving left the road and overturned.. He left two daughters, ages 9 and 2.
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