My great grandmother Victoria

My great grandmother Victoria was my great grandfather Jim's second wife. His first wife and child had died in a fire - as I've been told though I've no other corroboration for this, the fire that is and the deaths. It seems to me to explain, not excuse but explain, how he contributed to the hardness of Victoria's life.
She was the daughter of a school trustee and Jim was not very interested in education. Her father did not like Jim (although it was Jim who year's later went back to Georgia for his funeral). Not long after their marriage, Jim moved the family from Georgia to Arkansas, where his sister and brother-in-law had settled. (I have relatives in Arkansas who'd not know me from Adam or even Lucy of the Olduvai gorge) From what my great uncle tells me, his father was not the most faithful man and at some point, when the family had been in Arkansas for 20 years, Victoria put all the children on a train and headed home to Georgia. She'd missed her father and mother (who'd both died while the family was in Arkansas). She'd missed the green hills. Six months later Jim showed up again and she took him back.
My great uncle has a kind of love/hate feeling toward his father. He adored his mother though. But it was not long after the family returned to Georgia that Victoria succumbed to cancer. She died in 1926.
The top photo is Victoria at about 25 and the bottom one was taken close to her death at 50. Looking from one photo to the other, I'm struck by how hard her life must have been. I can tell she's done a lot of work and suffered a lot since she wore that ornate, lacy hat and her easter dress in that early photograph.
In family systems we talk about how things come down through the generations: how relationships and dynamics are replayed from one family unit to the next. Everyone is effected differently - as we each understand these things with a stronger or weaker sense of self. But I do wonder at how we've all (in our family) been effected by Jim and Victoria down the line.
Perhaps when I go home for the Fourth I can trouble my great uncle for some further remembrance of his mother - or maybe I'll just spend some time with him and let the past rest.