Edith Mary Williams was the fifth daughter of Isaac Amos Williams and Caroline Seymour Sanders. I have found two marriage records for her; the first is a marriage to a Willian Henry Muckle on 15 March 1882 in Lindsay, Ontario, Canada. The second marriage was to William Bastoph on 7 November 1895 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA.
There were a few interesting things about these findings. The first one is the question of how Edith got from Lindsay, Ontario in 1882 to Omaha, Nebraska in 1895. I was not able to find a death record for William Henry Muckle - assuming that he died somewhere between 1882 and 1895 - checking in Ontario, Manitoba and the US as well. But one of the most interesting things is that in the second marriage record, Edith's last name is listed as Williams and not Muckle. It was as if the first marriage hadn't happened at all.
Some time ago, I was looking into William Bastoph's Civil War history and requested a copy of his pension file. I certainly was not expecting to find an explanation to all of that in a pension file, but sure enough I did.
Included in the pension file was a copy of the decree of divorse from Edith's first husband:
The decree was from the State of North Dakota and evidently William Henry Muckle deserted his wife on 17 January 1889 and went to Seattle. The divorce was granted 4 August 1890.
That certainly explains why she reverted back to her maiden name and why I couldn't find any death information for William Muckle. As for how she got to Nebraska, it's still not confirmed, but after the divorce, she could have moved in with some of her relatives and moved around.
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