Full Name: Lydia Carson

Date of Birth and/or Age: 37, September 28th, 1830

Sexual Preference: Heterosexual

Ethnic Background: American

Occupation: Maid to Joanna Chandler

Family: Mother - Maribel Carson (deceased), Father - Alton Carson, Brother - Daron Carson, Sister - Laura Carson (deceased)

Current Residence: In a maid's quarters in Joanna Chandler's house

Appearance: Lydia is around 5'5" with blonde straight hair that hangs down to her shoulders rather plainly. She has bluish green eyes, and is very slender but a bit muscular from the physical labor she does. In fact it looks like she doesn't eat very much, and though she doesn't look anorexic, she looks more then slightly emaciated. Her skin is on the paler side, because she works more inside then outside. She usually walks with her head down and avoids looking anyone in the eye. She doesn't usually wear anything but her maid outfit, which is a simple dress with an apron over it. She has a habit of talking with her hands and gesturing a lot with them. Most of the time her hair is kept at shoulder length but not tucked back unless she's cooking.

Personality: Lydia believes herself to be a fairly resilient woman, and indeed she is, though she has a bit of a habit of running away when things get tough instead of sticking them out. When her mother died, she and her father left, and then they left again. When she couldn't take anymore of Theo, no matter how much she loved him, she ran away instead of trying to figure things out. That caused them to move yet again, and when Joanne told her that she wanted to run away, Lydia automatically signed up to get away from whatever she was feeling. Though she doesn't know how long she's going to stay in New Shelby, she feels like it will only be a matter of time before she runs off again.

Her behavior is a bit obsessive, she likes everything to be neat and straight, maybe to make up for the bad things that she's done. One part of her life needs order when everything else always seems to be chaos for her. She cooks and she cleans until her hands are completely raw, not just the house, but herself as well. Slightly self abusive, she's been known to drink herself until she passes out on occasion (though usually those times are right before she runs away) but she doesn't make it a habit of drinking all that much. Even if she's rigid with herself and her own standards, she doesn't really apply those standards to everyone else. Her father wasn't the neatest person, nor was the rest of her family, but she never tries to get them to be.

She's a nice girl, and very loving and giving of herself and has a tendency to want to care for people and tend to their wounds but she believes that she can't do that anymore. There's a lot of guilt in her head from the things she's done, and that's why she's become a maid and no longer a midwife. She misses her father terribly, and her brother too, and she even misses Theo quite a bit, but she'd never try and do anything about it. Though she doesn't approve of everything that Theo did, she turned an eye to it, and maybe even once or twice helped him out.

Quite a bit she's forgetful to the point where if it's not written down for her, she couldn't make it to the store or anywhere else. There are tiny notes all over her bedroom to remind her to do this or that. Her biggest fear is that she's going to hurt someone with her own actions that doesn't deserve it, and eventually she's going to have no where to run and must face the things that she doesn't want to.

Special Skills/Weapons Used: Her cleaning is impeccable and some would say that she's a bit OCD long before the term was even invented. She makes things sure everything is straight and that everything is clean and won't rest until it's done. She's also very good at grocery shopping and budgeting people's money. If Joanne gives her money to get something, she can think up the best economically sound way to use that money to get the things that they need.

Weaknesses: She's not very good at taking care of herself, especially remembering to eat. It can be a day or two before she realizes she hasn't actually eaten in a while. Sometimes it takes Joanne to remind her that she needs to do so. Other then some cooking and cleaning, she's not very good at any other domestic duties. She can't sew, or mend wounds or anything like that. The way she has to have things a certain way can be a bit bothersome to other people, not just herself. She constantly redoes everything until she thinks it's perfect, which makes her a little neurotic. It also means that she's very focused on the task at hand, and she doesn't really pay any attention to anything other then that one thing until someone comes up and physically removes her from what she's doing. She's not good around horses, and doing most chores for Joanne is completely lost on her.

History: Lydia was born in 1830 in Oregon to a midwife and her husband who was a coffin maker in a small town, she was the youngest child, with an older brother and an older sister. Most of the time her sister and her mother raised her since her sister was about ten when she was born. As the youngest child she was a bit doted upon, but because her brother and sister were older, she was the only one left in the house when she turned 13. As a child she was pretty playful, and was a good child despite the things that her siblings tried to get her to do. Her brother moved out first after he had taken a wife and started his own farm on the outside of town. Since she passed her brother's house every day on her way home from school, she stopped there and sat with her brother and her sister in law until it was time for dinner before going home. Soon she had nieces and nephews, which she was all too happy to babysit.

Her sister married a man and moved out a couple of years after her brother had done so, and though she adored her sister, they decided to go and live in Nevada. This left Lydia home alone with her mother and father. Not too long after Laura had moved out of the house, her mother got TB (consumption). The doctor came and immediately had to quarantine her mother and the rest of the house. A couple of weeks later, when it was determined that she and her father hadn't caught the disease, they were free to go, but they knew that her mother wasn't going to make it. Both she and her father went to stay with her brother and his wife and children for the last couple of weeks during her mother's illness until she finally passed away when Lydia was 16. The night of her mother's funeral, her father sat her down and told her that it was just the two of them, they couldn't stay with Daron because there was too many mouths to feed as it was.

With no where else to go, they packed up what they could from the house, and sold it and took what little money they had and headed to Nevada near her sister. Settling in a town just after she turned 17, her father started up his business again, while Lydia tried to pick up the trade that her mother had, becoming a midwife but she wasn't that good at it. Too busy trying to find work, she never thought about settling down and getting married. Still she worked quite hard to try and fix her midwifing skills and she eventually got work being an apprentice or an assistant of sorts to the women who did them. Ten years later, in 1857 she met Theodore Ellwood on her way home from delivering a baby, spotting him in a fight he was having with some man who was probably going to kill him. She intervened, and since neither one seemed to want to hit a lady, they broke up the fight.

She took him home and dressed his wounds. Sometime after that they began to date, and Lydia was sure that she was in love with him. However sometimes he would yell at her for no reason, and he was constantly getting into trouble. She wanted to look the other way, and did for most of the things he did, but eventually nine years later, his antics coupled with the fact that he yelled at her constantly and was always in a state of depression it seemed. Not only that but sometime right before she left, she realized that she was pregnant with Theo's child. She was a couple of months along but it didn't matter, it terrified her because she thought she wouldn't be a good mother, she thought Theo would be angry at her. That's the real reason she packed up and left without a word to Theo, just one day packing all of her things and running as fast as she could back into her father's house. That's when she stopped really remembering to eat, and eventually got distracted enough where she made a mistake during the delivery of a child that caused the child to die. Everyone in the town blamed Lydia though they never said anything to her face about it. Wracked with guilt, and not remembering to eat, only a few weeks later after the the incident, she miscarried her own baby she was carrying.

Without a job, and quite confused about what to do, her father thought it was best for them to move. Somewhere between Missouri and California, they met a family on the road with a lot of money. The Chandler's needed servants, and so Lydia and her father followed them into California, where her father did some of the ranching around the estate, and she became a maid in the house. They always kept in touch with her brother throughout the years, sending letters when they could from wherever they had ended up. A couple of months ago, they got a letter from him saying that he had heard from her sister and that she had died in an accident. Not too long after, Joanne confided in her maid that she wanted to run away and move somewhere where she didn't have to get married. Her father was distraught at losing someone else, and so he stayed behind. Lydia packed her things and went with Joanne towards New Shelby.

Note: Anything in italics is new to the history.