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Once again Baxter found himself at odds with the younger generation, this time with Horatio S. Weston, the oldest and the dominant brother. Despite the strong protest of nephew Sidney Otis and son-in-law John Weston, Baxter was let go as superintendent of the Weston mill. But Otis and John Weston came to the rescue, and Marion found himself with the superintendent?s job at the L. N. Dantzler Lumber Company mill in Howison, Mississippi, about 25 miles north of Gulfport. Again the family moved; this time it was Ella, Marion, Jr., Beulah, and Clay.
Not long after moving to Howison on October 17, 1907, Marion Baxter at 60, married a 23-year-old widow, Mrs. Jeannette Holleman, at Bay St. Louis. Little is known about the second Mr. Baxter except that her sister?s husband, Capt. McGee, skippered a boat between New York and New Orleans. Later Jeannette left Baxter and went to Boston, never to return. John Weston met her in Boston once on a trip back to Maine and discovered that Baxter was still sending her money periodically.
Following the years with Dantzler, Marion Baxter was employed by the Standard Export Lumber Company, agents in Gulfport who handled foreign lumber shipments for Weston Lumber and other mills. On an application to the State of Mississippi for a pension as a Confederate veteran, he listed himself as a lumber talliman (a talliman inspects and counts batches of lumber). His application for pension was witnessed by W. R. Washington, a fellow veteran from the days of Company E, 20th Mississippi Regiment. The application stated that he and his third wife, Maud, owned their own home in Gulfport and also took in boarders. He had married Maud Sowder in Hattiesburg, Mississippi on 21 May, 1914.
As he advanced in years, Marion Baxter dropped out of the lumber business and began taking odd jobs. During one period he served as houseman for various hotels along the Gulf Coast and at the Southern Hotel in Hattiesburg. The 1920 census shows M F. Baxter living with his third wife, Maud, in Gulfport. He was not working, and probably the couple was still taking in boarders. On June 4, 1923, he took up residence at Beauvoir, the final residence of Jefferson Davis, which the State of Mississippi had made into a home for Confederate veterans, their wives and
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Baxter, Marion Francis Marion-Francis-Baxter-Bio.-086
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