Written by

Mary Day Mathews Daily

in About 1953

To begin with I am writing my life as a child. I had four brothers and one sister, my sister and oldest brother being ten and twelve years older than I, made me a tomboy. We had many dangerous experiences, but my mothers faith was always with us. We lived in a wild part of the country, no near neighbors, one and a half miles from the Ohio River in Indiana. At this time I am seven years old. My sister and oldest brother had to work and help make a living as my father had rheumatism at times so very bad, and wasn't able to do much on the little farm. My mother was a good woman and worked so hard, we were very poor. My father received a small pension, he was a soldier in the Civil War and had been wounded, but it wasn't enough to keep eight of us going. My brother nine years old and I had to go a long ways to school across a deep creek, to get across we had to walk a log but not once did we slip or fall. Once my mother sent my brother and I on an errand to the nearest neighbor. We had to go through a long dark woods. I remember seeing lizards creeping up trees but I didn't get frightened untill on our way back, we were winding our way through high weeds and brush we heard a rattleing noise, just a few paces from us. We had heard the older folks talk about rattle snakes, we knew must that was what it was, we just flew hand in hand untill we thought we were out of danger. My oldest brother always set snares in late fall and winter to catch rabbits so we to wanted to do the same he showed us how to set and bait the snare with a piece of apple or carrot. We went out each morning early to see what we had caught at first we had no luck but one morning to our surprise one of our snares had something big hanging on it, not a rabbit, we had never seen a bear, but to us thats what is was. We ran as fast as our legs would take us back to the house to get our brother to get the bear off for us. When we got back to the snare he laughed and laughed, he still didn't tell us what it was, untill he got home and showed it to our mother, she laughed but we didn't see anything so funny, he said "a "bear" it was a big fat possum. So the time came when our mother was to have another baby. For four days she was very low. We younger children were took to a neighbors home, while she was so very sick. Either her or the baby lived. I shall never forget my father when he came after we little children, he was so heart broken he could hardly get the words out to tell us our mommy had died. A neighbor lady was helping to take care of her said "she prayed to the heavenly father to take care of her children." Her prayers have been answered many times. So she was put away to rest in a little church yard, in a watery grave, it rained so awful hard they had to dip the water out before the coffin could be lowered. My mothers saying was "blessed is the corps that the rain falls on" so it surely fell on hers. We stayed the rest of the summer on the little farm. Fall came my father got restless and didn't want the responsibility of raising all of we children. My oldest brother and sister were old enough to be on their own. The two youngest were sent to the Sailer and Soldiers Orphans home, the brother nine years old was put in the home of a well known family. A lady from Georgia was visiting her mother and relatives a few miles from where we lived. She wanted a little girl to raise, and got in touch with my father agreed to let her have me but not adopt me. We all went the four ways. My older sister and brother said "Outside of mothers death, seeing we little children separated was the hardest thing they had to go through". Then the lady came after me to get me ready to go, a small city then Thomasville, GA was her home. I had never been in any town, never knew anything but the sticks. So I a little girl of seven went from rags to riches, as she was wealthy. Her name was Adrena McKee a Presbyterian ministers widow. I was taught to call her auntie. The first move was we had to go to the river and hail a boat. I can see that boat yet today slowly coming into shore. After the gangboard was lowered and we were about to enter, I began to scream and kick, I wasn't going on that boat finally the Captain had to pick me up and carry me on, after all I thought it was pretty nice. We had to go by boat to Louisville, Ky from there we went by train to Thomasville. Auntie was very proud of me, she sent me to school, gave me music lessons, painting. Painting was my favorite, as yet today I love to paint. I had many experiences while living there. Many times have I gallopped over the golf grounds where our President Eisenhauer plays golf today. It was a very different life to what I had been used to, but I grew to like it. And then the time came when I was to make another change. My sister was getting married, so she wanted me to come back to Indiana to live with her. Auntie and I was so grieved about this. But she got me all ready to make the trip all alone, I was eleven and a half years old. The day before I was to leave was Memorial Day. We went to the cemetary, they were decorating graves, there was speaking, Soldiers Marching. The sun was beaming down so hot on me, all at once I felt very sad and sick, from then I knew nothing untill I came to, someone was slapping me in the face with a wet handkerchief, and that someone was little old Dr. McIntosh who lived on the same street, two blocks from where we lived. There was a story about him in one of the Readers Digest some years ago. He always wore a Prince Albert Coat and a high top silk hat, he had a beard nearly down to his waist. Many times he would walk with we children on our way to school. We thought he was a funny little man although we liked him very much. The next morning after Memorial Day, I was took to the depot and given instructions about how to do and where to change trains at Montgomery, Ala of coarse trains didn't run then as fast as they do now. I was on the train two nights and almost two days. While on the train a young married couple became very interested in me and feeling sorry for me I being all alone, also a Methodist Minister was so fatherly to me, he would put his coat over me as I slept in the slat beside him. The next morning we were in Ky. I remember looking out, the sun was coming up over one of the beautiful Ky Mountains. We were to get off in Louisville, Ky. My sister was to meet me at the Union Station, where I was at but they were not there, they went to another as they were mistaken in the one I was to get off at. The younger couple wouldn't leave me alone, their home was in Louisville, they insisted that I go home with them, of coarse I thought that was all right, not thinking how much trouble that would mean to my sister. She had to take a room at a hotel and stay untill I was located. I was having the time of my life. Mrs. Smith had me to change into one of her dresses while she washed mine, Mr. Smith would take me to the store with him and get me ice cream and candy. By this time my sister was frantic, because a train dispatcher told her he saw a man come up to a little girl answering my discription asking me to go home with him. There was a big write up in the paper, about a little girl being kidnaped. The Minister who also lived in Louisville, reading about a little girl being kidnaped, wondered if it could have been the little girl that had been on the train. He came immediately to the Smith's. They notified the police, then I was delivered safely to my sister to start another way of life. They lived on a farm, and I liked that life so much. I grew into my teens at age eighteen I met a young man that I loved very much. We went together for a year, in Nineteen hundred Nine in the month of May we got married, and started a lifetime life together which was wonderful. We had four children, two boys and two girls. All married and have familys. My husband passed away in Nineteen hundred and forty seven. I am still a widow seeking a new and better way of life. I had to have an operation, for a day and a night I floated in billowy white clouds. I heard the nurse say, "you had a rough time, but you made a tough fight." I had four little children I wanted to go home to and so I'm sure it was my mothers everlasting faith that was with us. My sister my four brothers are still living.

PAGE 1	PAGE 2	PAGE 3	PAGE 4	PAGE 5	PAGE 6
PAGE 7	PAGE 8	PAGE 9	PAGE 10	PAGE 11	PAGE 12