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In 1880, the year Angeli/ne Vermelle was born, tragedy struck the Baxter family. John Hancock Baxter, father of Marion Francis Baxter, died as a result of an accidental blow on the head. Circumstances and details were never fully established, but it occurred during a period when John H. was living alone in a cabin on Baxter Island and operating a small sawmill there. Baxter Island was located in the back reaches of Bay of Biloxi. Baxter was buried in the Mississippi City cemetery.
An even deeper tragedy occurred in 1885, the year Jefferson Lee was born. Marion Baxter?s oldest son was William Lloyd; he was named after Maj. Gen. William Loring and Brig. Gen. Lloyd Tilghman, two of Baxter?s commanding officers during the war. In January, Baxter and his son went hunting in the lowlands and marshes abutting the Pearl River. The weather was miserably cold and damp, and young Willie (he was 11) came down with pneumonia and died on January 22, 1885.
In the years that followed Marion Baxter steadily advanced with Poitevent and Favre. About 1885 he was named superintendent of the company?s operation in Pearlington, one of the largest lumber mills in the world, during this period Baxter and his family occupied a large, Greek-revival style house located within easy walking distance of the mill. Beulah Baxter Schupp, long after her father?s death, described the house in Pearlington with these words: *It was a nice big old house with columns. Two or three feet off the ground. It had a big center hall where Papa kept his desk. There was a parlor on one side as you came in from the front porch, and a huge master bedroom on the other side. Further back were five or six bedrooms, and of course, the dining room and kitchen and all that. After we had lived there awhile Papa built a great big room, about 25 feet long, across the whole house in the front, and it had a huge fireplace."
Marion Baxter for years was a loyal and dedicated member of the Masonic Lodge. Soon after he moved to Pearlington, he became a member of the Moses Cook Masonic Lodge 111 at Gainesville, a few miles north on the Pearl River. In February 1882 the Grand Master of the Mississippi Grand Lodge issued dispensations to 15 Master Masons of that lodge for the purpose of organizing a new lodge at Pearlington. The lodge operated under dispensation for one year with Marion Baxter as
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