This farm girl came from Emery, South Dakota.

Jeanette Carlin was born September 9, 1952 at St Joseph's Hospital in Mitchell, SD the fourteenth child of a farm family who lived five miles northeast of Emery, SD. For Jeanette farm life was great, new baby animals every spring, chickens, ducks, rabbits, lambs and calves.

First grade was at St. Martins School at Emery, sometimes we walked and sometimes we rode in an old motel T car. But in the spring of 1959 her family moved from the farm to a forty-acre parcel of land five miles east of Rapid City, SD, an area they call Rapid Valley. The fall she started at St. John's School in Rapid City and in 1967 graduated. In the next fall she attended South Jr High School for her 9th grade and was in the Southern Sharps a singing group from the school. The following fall she attended Douglas High School near EAFB and graduated in May of 1971. By June 1 she was attending Greens School of Beauty Culture and on the 27th of Nov. 1971 she married Jerry Edwards and graduated the following July in 1972. Then she packed her things and moved to Pierre, SD where her husband was already living, ending up in the hospital from the move trying to keep her unborn son Jason, who was born in December, her daughter Julie was born in April, sixteen months later. From Pierre, the couple moved to DeSmet, SD, where after two surgeries, near death and a blizzard, Jeanette took her two children and moved to Belle Fourche, SD. Not too long after that she moved her children to Rapid City, needing two more surgeries. Soon after all that she moved her children to Fort Worth, Texas where while working in a factory she ended up in the hospital with a near death again. By June 1977 she was Saved at the Fort Worth Baptist Church, soon after that she moved her children back to South Dakota.

Jeanette attended Western Dakota Vo-Tec for Building Construction and graduated in 1978, using her skills for the rest of her life.
On April 14, 1987 she married Randy Wallace and during this time Jeanette started lambing for Boyd Wallace then attended Madison State College at Madison, SD for one year then transferred to South Dakota State University at Brookings majoring in Printing. This is when she really started to work on the Bible charts and continued to do so after college when the couple moved to Belle Fourche, SD. While in Belle Fourche, she started lambing for several ranchers within a one-hundred-mile radius of Belle Fourche, Pete Larson, Tom Davis, Kevin and Mary Buchholz, Victor Reed and a few more. Jeanette kept some bum lambs at their home and raised them and sold them. With this money from lambing, she bought her first computer and started researching her family history which she continued to do for over 30 years, reaching as far back as the American Revolution on her mother's side.

Jeanette's hobbies were drawing, painting, music, singing, photography, writing poems, short stories and keeping journals, carpentry, building toys for her children, later furniture and finally buildings. She also loved days of studying her bible and learning who the people were and why they were important and much more. Then teaching children's church and leading music at VBS and singing in church.

Some people are drifters; Jeanette was not a drifter but circumstances in her life made her move from place to place. Maybe she was searching for that farm life she was forced to give up but still longed for. That longing for quietness and baby chickens, baby lambs and the sounds and smells of the farm. Like the sounds of the cream separator on the back porch or the smell of fresh mowed hay and the smell of fresh straw in a barn filled with newborn lambs on a cold wet morning. The smell of fresh cow's milk as you milked the cows by hand and fed the barn cats. And the size of the giant hoofs of the work horses. She really missed the farm.
When the judge gave Jeanette permission to take her children out of the state of South Dakota she moved to Fort Worth, Texas and another time to Lamoore, California both places staying about six months. The city was not for Jeanette, so she tried to live in rural areas outside of small towns all over the state of South Dakota. In all by the time Jeanette was seventy-two years old she had lived in forty-nine places. Fixing up old houses along the way, raising chickens and lambs at as many places as she was allowed. Cancer came at the end, one more surgery, chemo and hospice.

Jeanette is survived by her son Jason Dean Edwards and wife Jodie of Box Elder, SD and grandson Jackson Dean Edwards of Forman, ND and her daughter Julie Ann (Edwards) Red Leaf, and husband Ray and grandchildren, Steven, Joshua, Ray Jr., Kathryn, Cora, and Jeannie Red Leaf and great grandson Theon Red Leaf all of Rapid City, SD; her siblings, John Carlin & wife Elaine of Greatinger, Iowa, Jim Carlin, Joe Carlin & wife Joanne, Patricia Janssen, Margaret & husband Buddy, Tom Carlin and Dan Carlin & wife Jodean all of Rapid City, SD, and Michael Carlin & wife Terry of Cheyenne, WY; Ann Anderson & husband Gerry of San Diego California and Mary Carlin of Oceanside, CA.

Jeanette was preceded in death by her parents, Patrick and Mary Carlin and four of her brothers: Paul Carlin, Leo Carlin, Charles Carlin and Richard Carlin.

Visitation will be held one hour prior to the funeral service at the church.

Funeral services will be held 11:00 a.m. Thursday, March 27, 2025 at the Community Church in New Underwood with Pastor Jake Julson officiating.

Interment will follow at the New Underwood Cemetery.