Frances Louise Baghot-De La Bere ^{1 2}

  General Notes:

Frances was the daughter of Michael Patrick Baghot De La Bere, member of an ancient English family, who immigrated to America to try his hand at farming but soon became the editor and publisher of the Sheldon Progress in Ransom county, North Dakota. The parents of Frances's mother, Louise Medbery, came to North Dakota from Illinois, also with the goal of farming. Louise's father had been a bugler in the Union Army in the American Civil War.

Michael De La Bere and Louise Medbury were married in Ransom county in 1906. Frances was born in 1907, then only a few months later, in January 1908, her mother died from tuberculosis. Five months after that, her father died of a suspected brain tumor. From that time onward, Frances was raised by her maternal grandmother, Harriet Houser, who brought Frances back to her home state of Illinois to live. Frances went to school and grew up there in Logan county.

In 1921, at age 14, Frances traveled to England for the first time to visit her De La Bere relatives. She returned to America, attended the University of Illinois, worked as a secretary in an advertising business, and then again traveled to England in 1931. Upon her return to America she married William Aldendifer, who worked in insurance and financial professions. They lived in the greater Chicago area and had a son and daughter.

After their children were grown, Frances and William moved to Prestbury in Gloucestershire, England, the same village where Frances's father was born. They resided only a few miles from the modest country manor that had been her father's childhood family home and the much larger manor house that had once belonged to the extended De La Bere family, but had become a girls' school and then a hotel in more recent times. Unlike Frances, William did not have family in England, but his brother had been a B-17 bomber pilot there in WWII.

Frances and William lived in Prestbury, a picturesque village on the edge of the Cotswolds, for the rest of their lives. They were active in their local parish church of St. Mary's and were buried in the churchyard. Frances's English grandfather, Rev. John Edwards Baghot De La Bere, a Church of England clergyman, had begun his career as vicar of Prestbury St. Mary's, and was a Patron of the Vicarage of St. Mary's during his lifetime.
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  Noted events in her life were:

• She appeared on the 1910 US Census in Sheldon, ND on 18 April 1910. ¹

1910 US Census
Sheet 3A, District 168, Dwelling 51, Family 52, Roll 1146
Sheldon, Ransom County, North Dakota
Home owned, no mortgage
Frances Dalabere..Granddaughter..3..ND

(Living at the home of her maternal grandmother because her mother had died from tuberculosis.)
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• She appeared on the 1920 US Census in Atlanta, IL on 26 January 1920. ²

1920 US Census
Sheet 10A, District 55, Dwelling 260, Family 261, Roll 383
Atlanta, Logan County, Illinois
Frances De La Bere..???..12..ND

(Orphaned and living at the home of her great uncle, William Howser, and her maternal grandmother.)

NOTE - If his birth date was 16 Apr 1852, then his age should have been 67 instead of 66.
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