Florence Scott Jackson: \u201cShe baked for hotels & restaurants to support [her children] after being widowed.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Chester and Florence\u2019s one-year-old daughter Evelyn died about six months before Chester did. Florence was left with two girls under the age of six and one on the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their story echoes that of Chester\u2019s great-grandparents Jason Thayer and Abigail Abbot Thurston (or Thuston). In the 1850 census, Jason, Abigail and their children are listed as residents of the Huron County Poor House in Norwalk, Ohio. Ironically, a couple of decades earlier, Jason had served as a Clarksfield Township overseer of the poor, whose responsibilities included sending people to that same county poor house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jason and Abigail\u2019s six-year-old son Eli died in November of that year. Jason died \u201cin a fit\u201d exactly one month later. He was 64, so he got a fuller measure of life than his great-grandson Chester would. Nonetheless, his death left Abigail on her own with their eight-year-old son William Henry and possibly an infant daughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There’s evidence that Jason and Abigail had two daughters older than William Henry, not living with them in the poor house, who were later adopted by Abigail\u2019s brother Hiram. Hiram\u2019s adopting his nieces is just one example of the admirable way this extended family looked out for their own. By 1860, William Henry was living with his half-sister Mary Jane, the daughter of Jason and Jason’s first wife Tamar. The widowed Abigail married a watch-and-clock repairman named Manoah Hunter. After his death, she lived with a series of relatives, including, possibly, Jason\u2019s stepdaughter, Tamar\u2019s daughter Tamar Ann. William married Fannie Jane Cooley, a granddaughter of his mom\u2019s husband Manoah. Fannie Jane may possibly have been related to Esther Cooley, an old lady who was living with Jason, Abigail and their sons in the poor house in 1850.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The relationships among these folks make genealogy charting software give up in despair. I think the takeaway is that life in Ohio in the mid-19th<\/sup> century was exceedingly rough. People were widowed multiple times, families broke up, you took shelter with any connection of yours who would have you. You went where you had to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/subnivean.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/LMJ_assumed_paths.gif\")