The story is told in the family that the Burbanks (Lyman A.'s parents) wanted a hired girl to help around the house so they contacted the Whitney family who sent Ann (age 15 or 16) over the hills from Tunbridge. It wasn't long before Ann and Lyman A. fell in love. Following their marriage six days before her seventeenth birthday and he at age 24, they continued to live with his parents in Royalton VT for one year. This was on a farm, known as the "Old Billing's farm," through which the present Interstate 89 highway passes just north of the Bethel-Royalton interchange. Those farm buildings burned in May 1866 with three deaths involved including that of Lyman Austin's father, Lyman. Had it happened a few months earlier it surely would have also consumed Lyman A., his wife, and their first child, Oren Abijah, who was born there May 14, 1865, a year less one day previous to the fire.

According to Mrs. Lovejoy's history of Royalton, "In 1866 Mr. Burbank bought the Kimball farm in Dist. Seven" where he lived until "He removed to Chelsea about 1881, and located on West Hill." The facts in the case make it look like Lyman Austin had just recently moved to his own farm and had not his mother, Emily, and his 30 year old brother, Norman, been visiting them, perhaps to see the new place or to help them settle, they also would have been victims. [The Kimball farm was located on Russ Hill on the road up Gee Hill from Royalton beginning near the railroad underpass east of the village. This farm was deeded by Oren A. Burbank to Lyman A., who is referred to as Lyman Jr., for $2,500 on 12 April 1866. After the Burbank's moved to Chelsea, the Russ Hill property burned, was rebuilt, then burned again. In more recent years, a mobile home was on or near the site.]

On 26 Dec 1903, after twenty-two years on the Chelsea farm, Lyman A. sold the farm to his son, John, for $2,500 and moved to a smaller farm on the Chelsea-Tunbridge Road, a mile or so south of Chelsea village, known by some in the family as "the place on the branch" which is a reference to the branch of the White River which ran in view of the buildings. Whoever supplied the information for the 1928 genealogy said that Lyman A. "was an up-to-date farmer, always keeping nice horses and cattle...Ten of his eleven living children joined the Congregational church at Chelsea, Vermont, in their teens. 'Much credit is due to their mother's patience and their father's good example.'"

They had 13 children.