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June 12th 1987
Well, here I am at the age of 90 yrs. and two months old and have just decided I'd go back to my childhood days and reminisce a little.
My father was born in New York. Quite a difference in it then and now. In 1842 when my father was born, New York was like the country, and they cut and hauled wood on the railroad, split shingles, farmed mostly grain. My daddy said he used to have to get up at four o'clock in the morning, split shingles until he was called to breakfast, then get ready for school and as soon as he and his three brother got in from school they started doing the chores. Milking the cow, feeding the horses and slopping the hogs as the old country folks used to call it, and many other little farm yard duties. Then after they had their supper they got up their lessons by candle light and as most people know the same thing went on over and over. My father's name was Jerome Daniels and his three brothers were Loyal, Benjamin and Alphonza. The two girls were Rosey and Emma. They had household duties to perform the same as the boys.
My father joined the Army in his late teens also his youngest brother Alphonza and one day my daddy was standing halfway back in his tent and his brother was standing in the tent door and was shot down and killed, right before my daddy's eyes and he my father was wounded in the arm. Shortly after he was released from the army he met my mother who was born in Glyndon, Minn. I think that was where she was born. That's where she and my father were married.
Her mother died when she was a baby and she had two brothers Lewis and Erwin, so after their mother died her father adopted them out and I don't know who took the two boys but a wonderful Christian woman by the name of Kittridge who had three daughters of her own took my mother and she was always called Mother Kittridge by my family. My mother's name was Orstella Hannah Atkins. When she and my father were married, she weighed 90 lbs and he weighed 280 lbs. She was a medium sized person and he was 6 foot two. A large broad shouldered man. He helped to build the first railroad in Minnesota. Also helped with money to build a hotel there. That was before he married. After he and my mother had a family of six, four girls and two boys and I
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