Charlotte "Lottie" Guynup was the youngest daughter of Aaron Guynup and Charlotte Hare Guynup, both from early-arriving Clinton County, New York families. Perhaps inspired by their adventurous forbearers, or simply struck with "western fever," they left New York shortly after Aaron's Civil war discharge, and migrated to Michigan. On to Kansas by 1884, then to Oklahoma for the first land rush in `1889.

Their children were not fond of Oklahoma -- Lottie perhaps the least. Family legend was that she stowed away in a sister's wagon, and escaped to Texas. While the dates don't quite work, she apparently did move on her own -- if not to Texas, at least to Colorado. By 1898 she met and married Oscar Vincent in Lamar, Prowers County, Colorado. They had one child, daughter Frances Nell, who preferred to be Nell. Lottie died far too young -- was just 26.

Research for Lottie was frustrating. Born after the key 1880 census, she didn't appear in a U.S. census with her parents. Only mention was in her father Aaron's Civil War pension file. A niece, daughter of older sister Lucy, remembered her mother's tales of her adventurous baby sister, but wasn't sure where she lived, or husband's name. Lottie's recently discovered Colorado marriage license broke the brick wall.