I sometimes come across people who I'd like to write about but can't because I'm flying by, and also because basically my book is about someone else.

There is this woman who is kind of parallel to the woman I am writing about. The woman I am writing about, Elizabeth, wqs an elocutionist in Toledo at the turn of the 19th century. She came to Toledo to set up an elocution business (actually she came because she married an insurance agent who had a business there) and she hung on for most of her life until she retired in 1929.

This other woman had to move to Toledo because her husband ran a City Directory project. Her husband's name was Thomas Martin so almost impossible to trace. They moved to Toledo in about 1882, about five years after Elizabeth got there. They moved there from Indianapolis.

But the woman, Lucia Julian Martin, had experience, having run a school for Oratory in Indianapolis. So somehow, when she got to Toledo, she started the Toledo School of Elocution and Oratory. Sounds good, huh? Elizabeth seemed to be involved. They were kind of partners in this enterprise as far as I can tell and both are at some point listed as principal.

Lucia went back to Indianapolis after only three years in Toledo, in about 1885. The City Directory project done, or under way, they didn't have to stay. But Thomas died sometime then in the late 1800's. Maybe he died early or maybe they were both a little older than Elizabeth, who was still only 47 at the turn of the century.

Lucia returned to Toledo in about 1895, but she is listed as a widow. She again gets work at the Toledo School of Elocution and Oratory, a school she probably founded. It changes its name some; at some point it's Elocution and Physical Culture. In any case she is partners with Elizabeth. Elizabeth also is a widow but has two young children. They teach elocution together or at least side by side in the city. Lucia is a little more into the physical culture fad of the age, elocution by knowing how to exercise the body and make lungs stronger.

Lucia eventually moved to Chicago and from there to LA. In LA, in about 1905, she was still teaching elocution, starting her own business again. But she died in November of 1908. In 1909 in LA newspapers lawyers can be found dealing with her estate.

But the best I can figure, she appears to be buried in Toledo. How did they get her back there from LA, or rather, who did? I find no evidence that she had any children, not to mention any who would go to that trouble. It probably had to do with her request. Records of her are lost (or seem to be) - I find no record of where she's from (probably Indiana), when she was born, when she married, etc. The gravesite record is all there is and even it is somewhat incomplete as it calls her Lucia J. What happened to Thomas? Were those lawyers in LA arguing about real money or more likely trying to figure out what to do with old scrapbooks? She seems to be lost to history - google searches come up empty, no information to be had, no idea who she really was.

But she seemed to like Toledo a lot, or at least I can infer that by the way she ended up there. I can't find anything else about the rest of her life, but by apparently being close to Elizabeth, actually a kind of mentor, you could say, since she seemed to start the College and was a bit older than Elizabeth - well, that's her ticket into my book. She won't be forgotten altogether, because she'll be in there.