Fascinating explanation, Chris. Thanks.
Beautiful and sad story about Edna Jane, all of which emerged through examination of records. (The family knowledge about her was far more limited than this:)
Her first marriage to my husband's great-grandfather was not a happy one (George may have been an alcoholic), and their daughter Helen was raised more by her uncle than her parents-- when she wasn't in some sort of boarding school.
By about 1910 (11 years into her marriage with George), Edna Jane hooked up with a married John Pridgeon Jr, former mayor of Detroit. They probably met in Boston. His wife requested and received a divorce by 21 Jan 1911-- I have yet to find a divorce record between Edna Jane and George Hill, but the family's own storytelling does include it. Edna Jane and John Pridgeon Jr married in Boston 3 weeks later, on Valentine's day; and 4 months after THAT, she gave birth to a stillborn in June (in Massachusetts). (From this we can surmise the reason for John's first wife's request for a divorce.)
Edna must have moved to Detroit; the following year, she gave birth to another stillborn, buried in Detroit. A year after that, while pregnant, she came down with pneumonia, gave birth prematurely to yet another stillborn, and then succumbed to the pneumonia a few weeks later. Two months after she died, the body of her first stillborn by John (the one born in Massachusetts) was moved to Detroit and re-interred with her.
John married a year later, a third wife-- who he had met and connected with as a result of "a death notice the year before."
His biographer (see Wikipedia) chose to exclude the second, short-lived marriage to Edna Jane Tanner Hill.
