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3-29-1988
When I was somewhere around the age of seven and a half years old I lived with my oldest sister Emma and her husband Jahue Murphy and at one time they lived close to the Pearl River at Napoleon, Miss. That was when Napoleon was quite a little place. I call it a place because it wasn't a town but there were many homes all around, a Baptist church, a large commissary, turpentine still and later years the Murphy boys put up a sweet potato factory then the same ones had a Coca Cola plant all on their land. Also, still later, Charley Murphy and his family were living on the old home place and he put up a small store down near the road which was right in front of their place. There was a cemetery a little ways beyond the Murphy home and you had to go through a lane between the house and a big field. Its more of a family cemetery because Mr. Simon Murphy Sr. his brother, Mr. Sam Murphy gave the land for a graveyard. It had never been cleared or cleaned up at the time my mother died. Her name was OrStella Daniels and my father and family had only been South a little over two years when she passed away. After my father had bought eighty acres of land with a big two story house on it also a horse to plow and work to help to make a living he never had the money to buy a plot in the cemetery so he decided to put her on a hill to the right of our home. I'll explain as near as I can. The house sat up on a slanting hill and you went down hill to a spring of water which was like ice water in the summer and was warm in winter, any way below this spring was a branch and there were three big fishing holes, each one separate, the spring water kept them full all the time. Then you go across the ravine up on to a hill about a half of a mile long and several hundred yards wide which was in the shape of a row like a row where you plant corn or many other kind of stuff. It was a beautiful hill with lots of trees and at the farthest end was a real large Magnolia and a chinquapin tree and that's where my daddy had planned to put my mother, so the day before the funeral my husbands uncle came up home and he asked my father where they were going to bury Mrs. Daniels; and he told him where he had planned to put her, so Uncle Wyatt told him she could be put in the Napoleon Cemetery and it wouldn't cost a penny so that's where my mother was put to rest. There had only been one woman buried in there at that time. My daddy told Mr. Murphy if they were going to make that a graveyard why don't we call all of the people of the community together and have a
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Hover, Eva Pearl Daniels Autobiography-081
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