[Letter:]

1 Feb. 16th 1946

E.3628 - 5^th Ave.

Spokane, Washington

Dear Nephew:

Was so glad to get you letter. Am writing you between your two trips East. Thank you for writing and thanks too for you invitation to visit you. How glad I would be to do so. Maybe I can. I have never been in Calif. but most of all I would like to see you. Jan. 29th I was 84 years young. I can't realize it. I feel so young. I can still run for the bus, and can work all day.

The Darling family were born in Collingwood

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Canada and our parents moved to Lewiston, N.Y. five miles from Niagra Falls when I was a baby. We lost our parents when I was two years old. There were six of us. John, Linus, Will, Mary, Addie and myself. I was adopted (not legally) into a family by the name of Robertson who lived seven miles from Lewiston. Mary went to live with a family by the name of Gray. Addie was take back to Canada by some of our relatives and I never saw her again. The boys were scattered. Linus told me he lived in different homes till he found one where he could go to school.

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He must have been not far from me as I remember of his coming to see me when I was a little child. John went back to Canada. Will went to Michigan where he married and Linus drifted out to Oregon. We corresponded for years before he married. What a tragedy for a family to be so separated. I was the lucky one of the family as I had a better home than the others. Though Mother love was lacking. I missed it without knowing what I missed.

Except the one visit from Linus I never saw

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any of them till Mary was eighteen and I twelve and she came to see me. I had driven with the folks past her home dozens of times without knowing that my sister lived there. She went by her own name but I went by my adopted name. Will had two children - Weldon who grew to manhood then was killed in an auto accident, and Gussie who is married and I think lives near Portland. Will visited me here a few years ago and died soon after.

Linus' second wife Lucy was the step mother of his

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girls and was kind and motherly. He afterward married Adaline and they lived in Portland where he had a law office. I visited them there and I was in Condon when he and Lucy lived on her ranch. John and I corresponded for years. He was captain on a lake steamer. Soon after I first saw Mary she went out to work for a Gilette family. L.P. Gillette who lived on the Niagra River road and in after years became my uncle by marriage. I was her brides maid and best man was the young man who afterward

became my cousin by marriage. That sounds like a novel does'nt [sic] it? Wedding was in the L.P. Gillette home. How little I thought what the after years would bring me. I was proud of Linus because he was self made - no one to do anything for him yet he because a lawyer. I am the last of the family. the rest have all passed on. Three years previous to my marriage I clerked in a big department store in Youngstown, five miles from my home on the bank of Niagra River. Just across was Canada

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I have a son Harold who is now fifty - a bachelor and lives with me, and a daughter Helen married and living in Spokane. They have a son in second year of High school. Helen works in an office for the city. She need some help at home so I go there two days a week. It helps her out and helps me financially. I get State pension but made my living at sales work till five years ago. I worked for the Avon Co. fifteen years. That is a cosmetic Co. Before that I was city sales lady for a

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syrup Co. with them two years. Part of that time I worked other towns for them. Was gone once three weeks. At the end of two years I gave out and had to quit. A hard thing to do. After a short vacation I was quite rested up and took up the Avon Cosmetic work. After fifteen years I was worn out and after a short rest went to help Helen out.

There is or was a Dr. Gillette, a physician in Rome, N.Y I don't see how you could have heard of him unless it was his propagating The Rome Beauty apples. You might

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have heard of Clerance [sic] Gillette. He was with a college in Fort Collins, Colorado and had several abbreviations before his name. His sister visited us here two years ago. She lives in Eugene, Oregon. She was a friend indeed to one when we lived in Klamath County. She lived there too. Thanks for telling me of the girls. I did'nt [sic] know till then that you had lost your parents. In one of the articles I clipped from my paper you were called Dr. and in the other one Professor. Are you both and of what? Please tell

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me what your work is.

I am really quite proud of you. Your picture was with one of them too.

Well really I think it's time to quit. Hope you are not tired of this long letter. I have written on both sides of paper as I had so much to say.

Hope to see you some day.

Thank you again for writing.

Sincerely,

Aunt Elizabeth