Since my three sons have been away from home, thro their thoughtfulness of home and mother, I have in a treasured collection, somewhere between six and seven hundred

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letters and cards from my sons, and they continue to come while I gladly add each one to the treasured list. And just here I look on and sometimes wonder with surprise that after Chas. working or pumping the organ, when a little boy, for four or five years in the church where his mother attended Sunday school for fifteen years and where his mother and father were married. This same organ was played for our wedding. Then after Chas. had left the church, his brother Thomas [in margin: 1904] took up the job in pumping the organ, and from that on, to be sexton, the job that his Great-Grandfather had for fourteen years [in margin: 1923]. And at this writing, Thomas has held the same job for nineteen years and still there - seemingly quite a favourite with most of the members. Thomas has had many offers by several of the northerners in nice jobs with various families to go north, but he always preferred to remain at his southern home in Augusta. The first offer was made to him when but a very small boy, by Commodore Gerry, one of the first and wealthiest visitors of the Bon Air Hotel. I would be glad to see Thomas take a trip elsewhere for a change in sight seeing if nothing else. But

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I would not over-persuade him not knowing the future, which may cause regrets. So I leave the subject to him for contemplation and decision, since he is old enough to decide for himself. Though regardless of the size or age of the son or daughter, there is always room for advice from the parents.

My eldest son Peter James was the first to go away in 1904. He spent several months in Boston. While there he lived with his uncle, and just as he was thinking of coming home in the Fall, he was called off on a trip to Montreal Canada where he remained and worked for nine months at a hall occupied by men only. He did fairly well there, and when it was time for the house closing he returned to Boston and worked through the seasons until the winter of 1906 when he returned to his southern home and spent the time here and part of season in Atlanta.

The following Spring he returned to Boston and has made his home there in the past eighteen years. Paying a visit every two or three years. In the Spring of 1906 my youngest son, Edwin H. decided that he would take a trip to Boston. And he has spent the past seventeen years in Boston and Springfield Mass. paying two visits to the southern home in that time.

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My husband was an ordinary laboring man but always provided satisfactorily for the home and his family and though his general affection, kind heart, and peaceful manners, he made things pleasant for the home. He was always cheerful, youthful in his manner and actions, fond of music. He never played, but he held a good voice for singing and in general made the home happy and agreeable. After good may years he was subjected to kidney trouble. He was in poor health for a long while, but he continued to work regular. He was finally afflicted with Brights Disease and was forced to undergo an operation [in margin: 1913] He passed through with this successfully and after a few months he went out again to work and continued on for a long while, when in the Fall of 1915 he was forced to give up as the disease had overcome his strength. So with the Brights Disease and Dropsy he suffered and lingered, become perfectly helpless until the first of Spring on the 21st of March 1916 he gave up all and passed away.

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