I am continuing to write Life Sketches for entries in FamilySearch Family Tree. Here is the biography for Lydia Stewart Tanner, the wife of John Tanner.
Lydia Stewart was born on
November 18, 1783. Her oldest son's death record states that she was born in Greenwich, New York. There was no Greenwich in 1783, so if she was born in the area, it would have been in
Argyle,
Charlotte County, New York.
Lydia’s parents, William Stewart and Amy Huntington or
Hutton Stewart, probably migrated from Massachusetts to the new settlements in Charlotte (later Washington) County, New York, in the late 1700s. They settled in the town of
Argyle, later Greenwich. Many of the settlers of the area, including the
Stewarts, were staunch Baptists or Seventh-Day Baptists.
Lydia married John Tanner in 1801 after his first wife died
in childbirth. She was the mother to one stepson,
Elisha, and twelve children:
William, Matilda, Willard,
Sidney, John Joshua, Romelia, Nathan, Edward, Edwin,
Louisa Maria, Martin Henry, and Albert. (
Some sources list a thirteenth child,
Pardon, but we have not yet seen any contemporaneous family documentation, and
histories including that of Francis M. Lyman do not mention him.) Elisha and
eight of her children lived to adulthood.
Around 1818, after the death of their twins Edward and
Edwin, Lydia and John moved about 40 miles to settle on the west side of Lake
George, first to the North West Bay, then to the town of Bolton. There, through
their hard work, they built a beautiful home and owned many acres of
timberland. John and his sons would have kept busy with raising stock and dairy
herds, lumbering, processing timber, growing and maintaining orchards, and
running a hotel. Lydia would have kept busy raising her large family, spinning
yarn, weaving cloth, and helping run the hotel. Her son Nathan said, “In those
days women turned the wheel by hand or foot that spun our yarn and made our
cloth. We were a hard working and hard handed family. None of our means was
willed to us, but earned by hard work and economy. My father used to say he
enjoyed accumulating property around him, and if it could be spent wisely, it
would prove a blessing. If spent otherwise, it would prove a curse.”
Lydia may have suffered complications from the birth of her
last child, because two months after Albert was born, she died at Bolton,
Warren, New York on May 31, 1825. She is buried in the Bolton Rural Cemetery.
Her gravestone says: “Lydia Tanner, consort of John Tanner, who died May 31st
1825, aged 41 years, 6 months & 13 days.”
Both of her parents died after she did and are buried in the
cemetery of the Bottskill Baptist Church in Greenwich, New York.
Several years after her death, her husband and his third
wife, Elizabeth Beswick, and many of her children joined The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) and moved west. But not all of them helped
settle the West; some remained in New York and Ohio. By the time her children
died, their families stretched from New York City to California. Many of her
descendants have given years of service to the Mormon church, both in
leadership and missionary work, including four who served as apostles:
Francis M. Lyman,
Hugh B. Brown,
Richard R. Lyman, and
N. Eldon Tanner. Lydia Stewart Tanner’s
descendants have left a legacy of intelligence, service, and devotion.
Picture of Lake George from Wikipedia. The 1796 map of the Lake George area is from David Rumsey Maps. 1820 United States Census from Bolton, Warren, New York from FamilySearch. Picture of Lydia's gravestone courtesy of Thomas Dunne at FindAGrave.
