I think it was in the year 1927, that we had a very much appreciated visit from my wife’s niece, Mrs. Charles E. Kilgour, her husband and their three children, Peter, Laura Anne, and Mary Lindsey. Our daughters Nelle, Bernice and Irene had seen our niece’s husband and children, having visited the family while they were enroute to Arkansas on their trip home before we came to Washington, but Mary, her mother and I had never seen them before. Nona as we always call her was looking real well, and much like she did when we last saw her, although it had been more than fifteen years. About the only noticeable changes were that she had become somewhat stouter and her hair was bobbed. Her husband is a tall man, has dark hair and dark eyes and rather dark complexion. He is a very genial, likable man and we were very much pleased to meet him and their children. Peter was about 13 or 14 years old and was a rather large lad af his age. Laura Anne and Mary Lindsey were very pretty young misses, and I think Mary Lindsey looked some like some of her maternal great aunts. The children had been taking music lessons, and while here, rendered several selections; the three playing together, an instrumental trio, I presume. They played very well, and we enjoyed the music. We were certainly glad to have the visit of these kinsfolk and hope they will come our way again. They went from here to Baltimore to visit Charles’ aunts, the Misses Kilgour who have charge of the Home of the Friendless in that city.

Sister Laura White obtained her position at the Home of the Friendless in Baltimore, Maryland, through Miss Kilgour, a maiden aunt of her son-in-law Mr. Charles E. Kilgour of Cincinnati, Ohio. During the first year she was at the home she made us several weekend visits. She seemed to like her position very well, though managing a dozen or more of obstreperous juveniles was surely pretty strenuous work. Laura seemed very cheerful and jovial for a woman who had a very sad experience during her more than a quarter of a century of widowhood. I think she was married to John William White about the year 1885. At the time of their marriage they were both school teachers. Then in a short time after their marriage her husband began the study of medicine, and after the birth of their first child, a son whom they named Lindsey Eugene, they went to Cincinnati, Ohio, where John attended the Cincinnati Eclectic Medical College, and they lived in an apartment during the college year.

Laura does not seem to like Cincinnati very well her dislike probably having been occasioned in consequence of the loneliness of her life alone with her small son in the big strange city during the days and part of the nights, her husband having to attend day and night lectures daily while the term continued. They returned to their Missouri home after the close of the college term, and then returned to Cincinnati the next year, and at the close of that collegiate year John graduated in medicine and surgery, the degree of Doctor of Medicine was conferred upon him and a diploma issued to him, authorizing him to practice his profession as an M.D. After they returned to Missouri and her husband located at Cross Timbers, a small village in Hickory County. I think John’s brother, Dr. George N. White, had already located in Cross Timbers and they practiced medicine in partnership. We visited them twice, I think, while they lived in Cross Timbers; they had a very nice, comfortable home, and they later acquired a drug store and as long as health permitted they prospered, financially very well. But after a few years of pleasant married life, John became afflicted with tuberculosis and the disease made such continuous progress that he had to give up his large and lucrative practice and seek a more healthful climate in the hope of staying the inroad of the insidious malady. They went to San Antonio, a city in Texas, but after staying there a few months without receiving any benefit they returned to their Missouri home. But continuing to grow worse John went to Colorado and stayed there a few weeks but the fine climate there gave him no appreciable relief, and greatly disheartened, he again returned home. His health became so bad that he sold his home in Cross Timbers and they moved to a small farm near Cross Timbers. Soon after they moved to the country, our daughter Mary and I visited them and found John very ill. Later in company with our brother-in-law William F. Coon, I visited them and he was in a very critical condition. He had been having hemorrhages from the lungs and it was feared that the disease might terminate fatally, soon. In a day or two we received the sad message announcing his death, which we were very much grieved to hear. He was a very bright intelligent man, a well informed physician, and a most exemplary citizen. He was a member of the Christian Church and lived a consistent Christian life. In his death his sorrowing widow and children lost an affectionate husband and father, and the country where he had lived and labored one of its best citizens.

His remains were laid to rest in the Bower Chapel Cemetery, near Urbana, Missouri.

After the death of her husband, sister Laura and her children went to the home of her parents Mr. and Mrs. Lycurgus Lindsey near Preston, where they stayed awhile and then her father gave her a small farm of forty acres of good prairie and situated only a short distance from her parental home, and erected a small frame dwelling house on the land, and she and her children lived there for a few years, and then to get advantage of better school privileges she and her children moved to Warsaw. She leased a hotel building, engaged in the hotel business, and had a very fair patronage. Her son and daughters attended the splendid public school. After she had been living there probably a year, my wife and our youngest daughter and I visited her and her children, and her sister Mrs. flrna Thurston and family who also lived in Warsaw at that time.

But the work she had to do in turning the hotel was arduous and after paying rent and overhead expenses, she found that the net profits were small, and she gave up the hotel and she and her children came back to her father’s home where they remained for some time and then I think through the advice of her brother-in-law, Judge Harrison White (brother of Doctors George and John White) of Pueblo, she decided to go there and she leased a roaming house and looked after that business for a year or more. Her main object in going to the Colorado city was to give her children a better opportunity to obtain an education. But later she concluded to move farther west and she and her children went to Spokane, Washington where they obtained employment in a factory. By this time her sisters Emma and Josie and their families had removed to Aztec, New Mexico, and hearing of the good opportunities to obtain a government homestead for herself and children, they left Spokane and came to Aztec. We were all very glad to have them with us, and looked forward to the time, in the near future, we hoped, when we would all have good homes there at a nominal cost. But our fond hopes were never realized. The great irrigation projects which were expected to water thousands of acres of beautiful mesas never materialized, and the money we paid for desert cnrns and to improve homestead claims availed us nothing and eventually most of us left the county. Subsequent history of Laura ‘s life is noted elsewhere.

At the time we came to Washington, D. C. in 1920, Mr. Frydell, at whose home we stayed for about a month, was an employee of the federal government and worked at the Navy department in the Navy Yard as a draughtsman. He had not been in good health for some time, had heart trouble, I understood, but was able to work, and continued to do so for perhaps a year. He was very friendly, companionable man and seemed to have a very good disposition. He and his wife and son Tom visited us a time or two during the first year of our residence in Washington, and he always seemed very cheerful. He was a member of the Masonic fraternity, and he and his wife were members of the Order of the Eastern Star, an auxiliary of Masonry. I think that our daughter, Bernice, became a member of the same chapter in the Star to which the Frydell’s belonged. In about a year or probably a little longer after I became acquainted with Mr. Frydell, his heart ailment grew worse and he became unable to work and had to give up his position at the Navy Yard. His physical condition continued to grow more serious, dropsy having developed and his limbs became so swollen that he could not walk. I think it was in the fall of 1922 Bernice and I visited him at his home and he was in a very feeble condition. His affliction grew very critical before the beginning of 1923, and on the 21st of February, 1923 he passed away. He was a kind husband and father and a good citizen. We all thought a great deal of him and regretted very much to hear of his death.

Among the friends whom our daughters have made since they have been in Washington, they have become more intimate with Miss Christine Riley than any of the others. She has visited us more frequently than any of their other friends and she and Bernice have become very much attached to each other. She was the first person with whom Bernice became acquainted when she arrived in Washington in 1918 and the friendship formed between them has continued and grown during the succeeding years. Christine is a very affable, friendly person and from the inception of their friendship she has been surely very much attached to Bernice and the attachment is mutual. They have always been working in the same government department, though not in the same room and have seen each other frequently.

After we had bean here five or six years, Christine’s sister, Eliza, who lived at their home in Pennsylvania, visited her, and while she was in Washington she and Christine visited us and spent a day with us. She was a rather frail looking girl then I thought though not ailing as far as we knew. But not a great while after she returned to her home where she was a teacher, she became afflicted with tuberculosis, soon became unable to teach and after a year or two passed away. Christine and her family also had a previous bereavement, I think before Eliza’ s death when their father died of cancer. We never knew him but feel sure he was a good old gentleman. We regretted to hear of their deaths and sincerely sympathized with Christine.

Two other friends of our daughters are Mr. and Mrs. George Burch, or as they usually call them George and Nellie Burch. Mrs. Burch is a government worker and is employed in the Veterans Bureau, and in this way Bernice became acquainted with her. For awhile after she met Nellie, George was gone. He was a sailor and the ship on which I think he was, probably, one of the mates would be gone several months at a time But after a time he gave up his maritime life and engaged in business in Washington. He was a barber. George and Nellie have visited us frequently and we have enjoyed their visits very much. They are both quite friendly and sociable and he is real witty, and often tells some humorous stories.

About five years after we became residents of Washington, Miss Della Lanier of Denver, Colorado visited us. She was a delegate from her church, Bapist I think, to an Association of the Church which was being held in Washington. We knew her when she was a child and resided with her parents Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Lanier on their farm near Aztec, New Mexico, and she was one of Mary’s pupils when she was the teacher of the primary department of the Aztec public schools. She is a niece of Mrs. Sherman Coon of Aztec, Mrs. Lanier and Mrs. Coon being sisters. I knew the Laniers very well and often saw Adella when she attended school in Aztec. A few years after we left Aztec Mr. Lanier died and Mrs. Lanier and family moved to Denver, Colorado.

In the year 1927, my nephew Zenas L. Slavens and his wife, Lily Jones Slavens of Springfield, Missouri, visited us. Zenas or sometimes Zene as we generally call him, is the second son of my brother Bailey, and was born near Buffalo. He is a small rather light complected man, has gray eyes, I think, and brown hair, His wife, Lily, is dark complected and has brown eyes and dark colored hair, and is rather stout. Zene had been in the grocery business in Springfield for some time in partnership with his brother Jim, and having sold his interest in the business to his partner, he and his wife decided to make a tour of the East and visit their relatives They had been to visit his brother, Thomas Albert, and family who live at Newport, Rhode Island. Albert, as we always call him, is a mechanician in the employment of tne federal government, and he and his family have been living at Newport for several years. On their return home from Newport, they came by Washington and visited his sister Miss Wylma, who accompanied them to our home and they stayed with us a few hours. We visited Zene and his wife when we were in Springfield in 1920, and that was the only time we had ever seen Lily. She and Zene are both lively turned and very friendly. They have no children, two children having died in infancy. We were truly glad to see our nephew and his good wife, but very sorry they could not stay longer with us..

In the fall of the year 1927, Mr. and Mrs. Orla C. Crudginton and son Orla, Jr. of Warsaw, Missouri visited us. They had been to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to attend the National Banker’s Association, Mr. Crudginton as a representative of the Osage Valley Rank of Warsaw, Missouri of which he was the president. We had known Mr. and Mrs. Crudginton for years. Mr. Crudginton is the son of Mr. George W. Crudginton and wife whom my wife and I knew well when we all lived in and near Urbana, Missouri and Orla was a small lad attending public school. Later Mr. George Crudginton moved to Cross Timbers and he and his son Orla were in the mercantile business for several years, and then became the proprietors of the Bank of Cross Timbers, and Orla married Miss Mae Curl, daughter of Dr. A. C. Curl, one of the prominent physicians and druggistes of Cross Timbers. It was while Mary, our daughter, was a teacher in the Cross Timbers School, that she and Mrs. Crudginton became intimate friends and they have corresponded with each other during the years since then. Subsequently the Crudginton’s disposed of their stock in the Bank of Cross Timbers to George Bliss and others, moved to Warsaw, acquired stock in the Osage Valley Bank and Orla became cashier and later president of the bank. We were all delighted to see these much esteemed Missouri friends. They stayed with us several hours and we all greatly enjoyed talking old times when we all lived in Hickory county. Mr. and Mrs. George Crudginton had died several years ago, Mrs. Crudginton in Urbana and Mr. C. in Warsaw.

A distinguished citizen of Denver, Colorado, Hon. S. Harrison White, member of Congress from Denver district, called on us in the spring of 1928. Judge White was one of my pupils in the Urbana public school during his boyhood days. He was a very apt, studious pupil, and made excellent progress in his studies under my instruction.. In early manhood he studied law in the office of F. Marion Wilson, an able attorney of Hermitage, Missouri, was admitted to the bar, practiced law awhile in Hickory County, and a little later went west and located in Pueblo, Colorado. After practicing in the judicial circuit awhile, his ability as a young attorney was recognized and he was elected District Attorney and after few years service in that position was elected one of the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of Colorado. When he was just beginning his career as an attorney, he was a very eloquent and logical speaker. I heard a political debate about that time between Harrison, as we always called him, and Attorney Riley Self of Buffalo, White being a Democrat and Self a Republican. They both made good arguments and acquitted themselves splendidly. We were much pleased to have Judge White’s visit and greatly enjoyed talking over old times when we were pupil and teacher in Urbana. While we differ in our political views, I was glad that his party had made its standard bearer in an election in which his party was almost certain to elect its candidate in the Denver district. I think he made a vary fair record as a congressman, but in the Republican landslide of 1928, he, as well as many other Democratic Congressmen, was defeated in the election.

It was in the late spring or summer of 1927, that Misses Florence and Marion Stockdale of Columbus, Ohio, came to visit us. We had all seen Miss Florence when we first came to Washington, at which time she was a roomer at the Frydell home, but none of us had ever seen Miss Marion except Nelle, Bernice, arid Irene. During the first year our daughters were in Washington, the Misses Stockdale were both here and both emoloyees of the federal government, and they all as well as Miss Christine Riley became intimate friends and were much together, often going on outings to nearby places in Virginia and Maryland. But before we made our home in Washington, Miss Marion resigned her government position and returned to her home, then in Pennsylvania, and perhaps two years after we all became acquainted with her Miss Florence, too, resigned and went home. Later their mother and stepfather removed from Pennsylvania to Columbus, Ohio, where they were residing when they visited us. We were very much pleased to see Misses Florence and Marion. They were exceptionally cultured and well-educated young ladies, and we enjoyed having them with us. After they went back to their homes they both engaged in teaching and when they were here Miss Florence had been teaching in Columbus, Ohio, and Miss Marion at some city in Pennsylvania. Miss Florence is a good pianist and sings well and while at our home favored us with some much appreciated music. One selection she played and sang was a darky melody I learned when I was a boy, beginning with "Say darkies hab yo’ seen old massa" & etc.

They only stayed with us a day or two and we regretted they could not remain longer with us. Some time after their return to their homes, possibly a year or more, we had the announcement of the marriage of Miss Marion to Mr. Miller, a business man in the city of Patton, Pennsylvania, at which place Miss Marion had been a teacher in the high school, and Miss Florence was still teaching in the high school in Columbus. A year or more later, Irene, with whom Miss Marion was quite a favorite, received the announcement of the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Miller’s first child, a son.

Ever since the Stockdale young ladies returned to their homes, Bernice and Irene have occasionally corresponded with them and Bernice still heard from Miss Florence. I think their mother was a widow probably, when our daughters first knew them, and later married a wealthy gentleman of Columbus, Ohio. Later Miss Florence wrote that her stepfather was afflicted with a cancer. In one of her letters to Bernice, Miss Florence kindly sent me a ballad of the Negro song she sang when she visited us for which I was thankful as I had forgotten some of the words which I had known and sung long years ago.