Margaret Matilda Armstrong Long (1832-1897)

Margaret Matilda Armstrong Long circa 1860

The Long Family, circa 1865 (clockwise from bottom left):
Margaret Matilda, Julia C, Margaret Lucy, John G, Willie

By all accounts, Margaret Matilda Armstrong Long, my great-great-grandmother, was a mighty woman. Widowed in 1862, when her husband, William Alfred Long, was killed at the Battle of Lone Jack in Missouri, Margaret Matilda was left with four young children to raise on her own. When the children were older, she moved the family to Laramie, Wyoming, where she was active in the Temperance Movement and the local Baptist church. Eventually she moved to Silver Plume, Colorado, to live with her daughter Julia, finally ending up in Los Angeles with her daughter Margaret Lucy. Another example of the pull of the west in my family tree.