LOUISA

My paternal 2x great grandmother Louisa Amata Richardson was born  on 23Jan1837 to Phillip and Esther(Laughton) Richardson at Wilton, Me.  She was one of 16 children, nine of them from Phillip's  marriage to his deceased first wife Eunice Richards. He must have moved from Wilton to Letter B Plantation(later Upton)Maine sometime before 1850 when he is listed on the 1850 Census there as a farmer. It was a small town, and one of the other families there was that of my 3x great grandparents John C and Arvilla (Ames) West and their son Jonathan P. West.

I've written before about how Jonathan's first wife Orpha V. Reynolds died a few months after their marriage during a diphtheria outbreak in 1862 which also took his  brother, two sisters, a nephew and three nieces. all children. I don't know when or how he met Louisa, but I do know they were married on 31Jan 1865. It may have been a difficult situation for Louisa, succeeding a wife who had died so young and suddenly. The marriage seems though to have been a good one and a prosperous one as well. According to material sent me by Norman Mitchell, Jonathan owned two lots of land, and a tract of 37 acres, while Louisa herself  owned land. Jonathan was pretty well off for a farmer, although probably not as wealthy as his brothers Asa and Hiram.

Louisa and Jonathan had three sons, John, Paul, and Philip(my great grandfather).
John became a civil engineer, and Paul and Philip worked in various jobs in the
lumber trade.  They also gave Louisa and Jonathan  twelve grandchildren.
They had been married 52 years when Jonathan died in 1917. Louisa followed
him in 1925.

John & Philip West

Louisa & her son Paul West

Louisa & Jonathan with family & friends.

I believe a marriage that lasted that long has to have been a happy one.

 
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