The above woman is Lydia Bridget McPartland, or in other records, Bridget Lydia McPartland. Her sister-in-law was also Bridget McPartland, so in her later life she used Lydia informally. However, legal documents flip-flop between names, so neither Kay Wright or I can definitively say which name was first: Lydia or Bridget. Only one thing was for sure -- she hated both them!
That priceless nugget of information is one of many that I got from Kay when I was visiting her. Lydia was a small woman, much beloved, and known to her family in later years as "Little Grandma".
Lydia's husband, Patrick, died in 1884 when he was only 49. At the time, she still had 6 children under the age of 18, the youngest only 3. Despite this hardship, she was a shrewd businesswoman and ran a successful farm. While we have no evidence that she received any formal schooling, she put at least three of her children and one grandchild through Normal School (what would be considered today as a Teachers College). She smoked a corn cob pipe and lived to be 92 years old.
If you think she was a tough lady, you'd be right. There are stories of her in her old age, encountering rattlesnakes on her property, and without breaking stride, picking them up by the tail and whacking them against the foundation of the nearest farm building to dispatch them.
