It’s time once again for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun with Randy Seaver! This is a different kind of challenge this week and it’s definitely not a few-minutes-quickie to create.

1)  Taneya Koonce wrote a Happy Birthday post about her own life in Quick Tip: Create Your Personal History Timeline – The Birthday Edition 🥳.  What a great birthday idea.

2)  This week, write your own Personal History Timeline – every 5 or 10 years, or the most important events.  If you don’t want to do yours, write a History Timeline for one of your ancestors.

I had to decide about which ancestor to choose because, while I’ve written some about my own life, it’s spread out over many posts!

I finally decided to spotlight my 3X great grandmother Rebecca (Jones) (Crouse) Blyther for a couple of reasons. First, she’s my Mayflower connection to George Soule. However, until I found her death certificate in Massachusetts in 1897, I believed that Rebecca’s world consisted of the square miles around Calais, Washington, Maine and bordering New Brunswick, Canada because she is buried in Red Beach Cemetery with a legible gravestone. It didn’t seem like she had ever strayed far from that area.

I was wrong!

Here’s her historical timeline:

1809, March 19: Rebecca was born in Fredericton, York, New Brunswick, Canada, the daughter of Richard Jones and Mary Boone.

c1826: Rebecca married Peter Crouse, son of Loyalist Philip Crouse and wife Sarah Burt in New Brunswick, Canada.

c1835: Peter Crouse died, leaving Rebecca with four little children. She married Benjamin Blyther of Calais, Washington, Maine as his second wife. Rebecca and her children leave Canada and settle in Red Beach, today part of the city of Calais, but back then a village outside of the “big city.”

1850: The U.S. census shows Benjamin, Rebecca and their blended family living in Red Beach. Rebecca has now given birth to nine of her ten children.

1860: Benjamin and Rebecca continue to reside in Red Beach, but their youngest child, little Albert, born in 1851, didn’t make the census as he died in childhood on 26 July 1858.

1870: This is the last census for Benjamin Blyther as he was a bit older than Rebecca, having been born in 1794. He died in 1878 in Red Beach.

I hadn’t found Rebecca in the 1880 census and thought perhaps she was in Canada with other family members since her children were grown and she was a widow. I hadn’t thought any more about it until I decided to research my 2X great grandmother Sarah (Crouse) Coleman’s blyther half siblings.

Mary (Blyther) Hannah turned up in Alameda County, California, where she died in 1893. Helen (Blyther) Wright died in Berkeley, Alameda, California in 1930. Ruth (Blyther) Campbell died on 10 October 1939, again in Alameda County. Henrietta (Blyther) Rusing died in Sonoma, Sonoma, California on 22 January 1944.

The last surviving Blyther child, Martha (Blyther) Smith died sometime after 1930, possibly in Watertown, Middlesex, Massachusetts. Her death is what started me poking around in Massachusetts records looking for this family.

I was shocked when I found:

1897, November 4: Rebecca (Jones) Blyther died in Hubbardston, Worcester, Massachusetts!

Yes, this is out of order, but while poking around California records looking for more details on the other children, I found Rebecca:

1880, June 17: Living with R.A. Campbell, wife Ruth, their children, extended family and two Chinese servants was “R. Blyther, mother.” They were living in Cisco, Placer County, California!!

Not only was Rebecca far from the Calais to York County, N.B., Canada area, she was 71 when she turned up in California and made the trip back to the East Coast by 1897 when she died in Massachusetts. The family even had her body shipped to Maine for burial.

Rebecca was an adventurous lady! I was amazed.

Thanks, Randy and Taneya, for this week’s challenge.