Ostiant or Chalenduin

First of all I'm very glad for you and your family that your mother is on the mend! That's awesome. You must all have had quite a scare.

As for Maude, it was very interesting to read your post about her. I especially liked where you used parts of the eps to show why you think about her as you do. I fully agree with you on her and especially on her truly doing the best she could in a time where it was hard to be a woman alone. The best proof of that for me is that, despite the hurt inside Ezra when it comes to his mother he also clearly loves her a lot. Wolfandboar already mentioned the fact he writes her for instance. And he does show admiration at the end of the eps for her. Personally I love the ambiguity of their relationship, it makes it so much more real.

As for her being able to leave Ezra with relatives, I don't think it was all that strange in those days. Mary does it too; she has Billy living with his grandparents most of the time. A part of the reason that she does this isn't only that she's on her own in making a living (although she could move in with the Travis' if she wanted and the fact she doesn't is another thing that makes her atypical for those times I think), but also to keep her son safe, since Four Corners isn't a safe place to live, especially not when the series starts. I think that's a very plausible part of Maude's reason to leave Ezra behind when he was little, she's not exactly in the safest business there is after all, even if she does it with such flair.

Like you I too believe it very plausible that being a con is the family trade and Maude probably learned it from her parents. It's in the way she says "we're business people and we're the best at what we do" at Ezra. I always thought she meant more than Ezra and herself, that she meant a broader 'we'. In those days it was very common that members of a family all went into the same trade.

As for Buck's mother not leaving Buck with relatives, I think the sad truth here might very well be that she probably, if she still had relatives, was considered a disgrace together with 'that bastard of a son of hers'. So she probably couldn't even leave him elsewhere, in a safer environment, even if she wanted to. But seeing the way Buck talks about her and the kind man he has become it's clear she did the best she could and that her best must have been a whole lot!

I'm always intrigued by where the Seven come from, since mostly it's only bits and peaces we know, except with Ezra and Nathan. With them things are pretty clear. And with Josiah we know a lot as well, even if not everything like if his mother was around or not when he and Hannah traveled with their father. Chris is the only one we truly don't know anything about; al we know about him is from later on.