Margaret Elizabeth Lewellen was born in 1872 near Topeka, Shawnee, Kansas. She was orphaned sometime between the ages of three and nine and remembered nothing of her parents. They were killed in an Indian raid and she was taken by a traveling minister John Calhoun Newton and his wife to raise. She met and married Adlebert Eugene Flower in 1887 in Enterprise, Wallowa, Oregon with John Newton officiating. She had fourteen children and lost the first seven at early ages. She also lost her husband in 1915 leaving her with the five youngest children at home to care for. The two oldest were taken by the state and placed in Catholic orphanages as she did not have the means to support them all. She remarried in 1919 to Charles Dobson, which turned out not to be a happy union and he diserted her so she divorced. In 1932 she lost a daughter and a grandchild to Euremia due to toximia during pregnancy and neither survived the delivery. Maggie was a gentle soul and very kind, but became senile in her later years, possibly had altzheimers in todays standards. She was cared for by three of her children for years but became to much to keep track of and was placed in the Pendleton State Sanitarium for her safety,diagnosed with Gereatric Senility and died there a couple of months later.

She lived a pioneers life of hard work, struggle and many heart renching losses but had a happy marriage with Adelbert, no matter the hardships. She was truly loved by her children and grandchildren. I remember her as a great grandmother and cannot believe she survived the hardships she went through as she was barely five feet tall and I don't believe she weighed over 100 pounds. I am so blessed to have memories of her coming to our house when I was a child.

It's women like her that were there beside their men who helped develop this country and leave us the legacy we have today.