There might be a few more posts related to my Brooks or Hatch lines in Vermont in the next few weeks, as I have been going through updated newspaper databases recently, and found articles related to these families.

This particular recent find got me thinking about my great great grandparents:

Dillon F. Hatch was just installed as an officer in this Templars group. He was all for temperance, as was seen a few years earlier where he was in the same group as his mother in Grand Isle.

In this same group just under his name is listed a young lady by the name of Miss Kate Brooks. Kate was Almyra’s older sister, by about 7 years. Hmmm.

In 1870 Dillon was in Louisiana working as a clerk:

Hatch H. F.  55, male, white, Banker, value of estate 10,000 born in Vermont [probably an uncle/cousin of Dillon’s although I don’t know who; b1815ish]
Hatch, Frank D. 21, male, white, Bank clerk, born in Vermont
Hatch, Joseph R.  16, male, white, attending school, born in Vermont

Details of 1870 federal census Louisiana, Jefferson Parish, 4th ward:
page 4, enumerated 10th June 1870, lines 1-3, house 16, family 31

A year later he is living in Burlington, and working as a pharmacist (his occupation as it appeared on his marriage record and in city directories). So sometime between June 10th of 1870, and August 8 of 1871, he moved back to Vermont.

He joins the Templars group because of his interest in temperance, meets Miss Kate Brooks, who introduces him to her family, and then he meets Almyra, who is the same age as himself. BAM! They fall in love, marry just over a year later, and live happily ever after. Well, that wasn’t in the paper, so I am definitely making that part up.

She married him in spite of that hairdo too!

I don’t actually know how these two met, but it does seem a very likely scenario. Although, Dillon’s job as a clerk in a pharmacy/apothecary could also have been their origin story. If only I had a time machine.