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about his war experiences, began scouting around for a job. All the mills in the area were short-handed, and with the post-war demand for lumber on the rise, Baxter had little trouble finding a place to work. Marion?s brother, John, had walked home from Mobile after having been paroled, and he returned to the lumber business as a mill mechanic. He lived with his widowed sister, Vermelle Otis, and her little son, Sidney.
For four years Baxter worked in the mills around Handsboro, and in 1869 he was offered a job as miller with one of the largest operations in Mississippi, that of Poitevent and Favre Lumber Company at Pearlington on the Pearl River. He was 22 at the time, still tall and slender, and he was destined to remain with Poitevent and Favre for the next 30 years. He became close friends with the Favre family, and later as he married and his family grew, he named several of his children after members of the Favre family.
The move to Pearlington opened up a new and exciting period in Baxter?s life, for there he met Marguerite Elizabeth Osbourn from St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, just across the Pearl River. Marguerite Elizabeth?s ancestors included a number of participants in the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. She was born in South Carolina, the daughter of Marguerite Elizabeth Crawford and Jeremiah Osbourn; soon after her birth, the family moved to St. Tammany Parish where her maternal grandfather had settled in November 1812. Later, Marguerite Elizabeth and her parents made their home in Pearlington. Here in the mid*1850s in what was reputed to be a dispute over a land trade, Jeremiah Osbourn was shot and killed on the front porch of his home.
Marguerite Elizabeth and Baxter were married in Pearlington on April 14, 1870, by the Rev. W. G. Stovall. He was
22	years; she was 17. Their first child, Sarah Amelia, was born January 2, 1872, at Hansboro. Then followed William Lloyd, born April 10, 1874; Ella Marguerite, November 6, 1877; Angeline Vermelle, September 5, 1979; Benjamin Sidney, May 13, 1881; Marion Francis, Jr., November 9, 1883; Jefferson Lee, November 30, 1885; Beulah Emily, October 31, 1887; Joseph Clay, August 17, 1890; and Rebecca Ann, July 3, 1892.
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