Lena D. Baxter Fox
born April 17, 1847
died May 9, 1920
Lena as a young woman. |
Lena was the sixth child and second daughter of Seymour and Dinah Baxter. She was the last of their children to be born in Canada and was two years old when they moved to the United States. She lived with her family on the farm in Lorraine, Jefferson County, New York and at the age of twenty married Jerome Henry Fox, a neighbor just a few farms down the road.
The young couple moved to a town called Worth about five miles away from her family farm. Within a year of their marriage, on April 14, 1868, Jerome was killed in an accident while cutting trees and Lena was left a widow.
Lena worked for various families, perhaps doing housework or sewing. She eventually moved back to Lorraine and lived with her parents and unmarried siblings, George, Diana and Will.
Lena died in 1920, four years after her youngest sibling Will sold the old farm and they moved to Mexico, New York.
Lena left behind for her nieces and nephews and generations after them, her diaries and her collection of obituaries and a few letters. In 30 diaries, Lena wrote a few lines everyday that tells of her daily life, of births and deaths, of weather, of letters received and persons who visited them. Her first diary is dated 1869 and the last one is the year of her death, 1920.
(I wonder if there were others and whatever happened to them.)
|
