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	James Frederick Mallett and Lydia Orcelia Williams
James	Family	Lydia

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James Frederick Mallett (Jr.) was the second child of James Mallett and Elizabeth Crook. He was born in Swansea, Wales, and Christened in Bideford, Devonshire, England, in 1828. He grew up in Wilmot Township, (not far from present day Kitchener) Ontario, Canada, having come there with his parents in 1832 or thereabouts when he was only 4 or 5 years old. In 1851, James and his older brother Frederick both purchased farms from the Canada Company in what is today West Williams Township, Ontario, not far from the towns of Parkhill and Strathroy. Between 1851 and 1861 James must have divided his time between his farm and the iron mines of northern Michigan, because he met his wife to be, Lydia Orcelia Williams, in Eagle Harbour, Michigan, where they were married in 1853. Lydia came from Cobourg, in Eastern Ontario, although she was born in Harrisburg New York. Her father had moved to Cobourg some years earlier. What this 18 or 19 year old girl was doing in what must have been a rather rough and tumble mining town in the early 1850s is a bit of a mystery.

Though they were married in Eagle Harbour, their first 7 children were all born down in West Williams Township. They seem to have moved away from West Williams for good before 1864, and some great distance too, because when James' mother died in that year, James' father wrote him a letter informing him of the fact only after the funeral. By contrast, the father had "wired" James' brother Frederick down in West Williams and he was able to attend the funeral. The 8th child was born in Eagle Harbour in 1863, so that's likely where they had moved to. From Eagle Harbour began an odyssey through the American mid-west and west which eventually ended in Portland Oregon. Over the course of their married lives James and Lydia lived in 11 different places (that we know of), including 9 different American States and 1 Canadian Province.

The list goes something like this:

• 1853-1863 West Williams Township, Ontario/Eagle Harbour Michigan
• 1864-1866 Eagle Harbour Michigan
• 1866-1877 Juneau County Wisconsin
• 1877 Creston, Adair County, Iowa
• 1879 Sulphur Springs, Cloud County, Kansas
• 1884 Cadillac, Wexford County, Michigan
• 1886 Lime Ridge, Sauk County, Wisconsin
• 1888 Broken Bow, Custer County, Nebraska
• 1892 College View, Lancaster County, Nebraska
• 1895 Barton County, Missouri
• 1898 Portland, Oregon

It is not known why they moved around so much, but because they did they left a trail of offspring all over the continent, some living, and some, unfortunately not. One child died in West Williams as an infant, 2 died in Iowa as teenagers, and 1 died in Iowa as a young woman. Wesley, the oldest son, married Ella Lewis in Iowa, and was known to be living in or near Omaha Nebraska as late as 1934. Orcelia married John Rinker and took up residence in Cadillac Michigan. The others seem to have made it all the way to Portland. Among the girls who made it to Portland, Sarah married George Henry Sylvester; Martha, Simeon Cohoon; and Elizabeth, Lewis H Brice.

Two sons, William and Frederick, both married and stayed in Portland. They have several descendants living (mostly) in the Pacific Northwest around Portland and Seattle. Frederick was a well known detective with the Portland police.

James and Lydia are buried in the "Columbian" cemetery (not to be confused with "Columbia Pioneers" cemetery), in Portland. James died in 1909, Lydia in 1915. Their son Gaylord, who seems not to have married, is buried there too.