Joshua Alvin and Mary Jane Tolman’s daughters from left to right: Theresa Lorraine, Martha Myrtle, Louise, Fannie, Lydia Ann, and Mary Alice.
Lydia Ann Tolman is one of six daughters of Joshua Alvin Tolman and Mary Jane Gorringe. Sarah Baskerville Alexander was Lydia’s sister-in-law. Sarah died of pneumonia just five days after giving birth to her fifth child, Sarah Alexander Tolman. In an act of great compassion and wanting a baby badly, Lydia offered to raise the motherless newborn. Her brother Owen Joshua Tolman told her that if she did not marry the man that she was engaged to she could raise Sarah. So she remained single and took the child for herself. Lydia met and married Albert LeRoy Egbert two years later. (Excerpts from an interview by Megan Kay Hyer of her mother Trisha Bischoff Hyer about her grandmother Sarah Alexander Tolman.)