My family visited my hometown the year my grandmother ("Gunga" as my brother sister and I called her) was 89. She was living in her own apartment attached to the home of my aunt and uncle, Peggy and Dick Rugen. She was such a good story-teller, I thought it would be fun to take her reminiscing about her life. Happily, Gunga agreed to give it a try, even though neither one of us had done any oral history before. We had a lot of fun doing it. To celebrate Gunga's ninetieth birthday I gave a copy of the tape to each of her children.
          This transcript is an edited version of the tape. I have removed hesitations words and some unnecessary parts of my questions. As my husband Bob, can attest, I had almost as much fun making this transcription as I did when Gunga and I first made the tape.
          
          --Carol "Tib" Henderson March 2003
            [name edited for internet protection]

Family reunion mentioned in text.

G=Gunga 
T=Tib
(L)=Gunga's wonderful laugh (of which there was plenty)

Side 1

T -- My dear grandmother, Gunga, Margery Chapman Valentine, is going to talk about her childhood in Belleville, New York. What year were you born?

G -- 1888, April 10th, 1888

T -- And there were already other children.

G -- I had two older brothers and two younger brothers, that was the family.

T -- You were in the middle of your family, and tell us about your mother.

G -- I could never describe my mother, never. Wonderful, unusual person. She was my father's second wife. She had to adjust and be a good stepmother to three children before her own five were born. Her nature was an impatient, somewhat peppery one, with the kindest heart in the world. She was witty, very intelligent, musical, in fact, music was a very important part of our lives. There was a great deal of family singing, especially on Sunday evenings.

T -- Did some of the family play instruments?

G -- My oldest brother, Ross, played a coronet. He took it up at a very early age when he was still in the local academy, probably about 14 years old. He was very popular with all manner of small band groups, and he played well. (L) I suppose we were quite amazed and he made a little money that way. Mother played the piano very well indeed, and somewhat grudgingly I took lessons and never learned to play really well, but I loved to sing and we sang a great deal, especially on Sunday evening.

T -- Did you sing Hymns?

G -- Hymns and then, you know, the Old Black Joe type, you know "Home Sweet Home" and songs of that kind.

T -- Did your father join in on that , too?

G -- Well, we were always sorry if he did (L). Well, we all enjoyed it. We had a good laugh and so did he, but he was practically tone-deaf, I think. My mother had an excellent alto. My brother, Ross, a very good baritone. My brother, John, also. And the little boys, Sanford and Donald, sang soprano, I suppose, along with me.

T -- Did you live on a farm or in a town?

G-- We lived in a small house in a very small village, probably a total population of 450 at the most. My father was the local doctor and he had what was called a "big ride," in other words -- a big radius. He always had two horses in our stable, so that if the very lively Lady Why -- the finer one, the younger one, the better horse -- was too tired he could take out Jenny.

T -- And in the middle of the winter he had to go?

G -- Oh my!

T -- How did people call him? In the middle of the night would somebody just come and knock on the door?

G -- They could come in a cutter with a horse, of course.

T -- Did they sometimes bring people to you?

G -- No, I don't think ever. I don't remember it, and it as a small house, I would have known, I think. But i can remember my bedroom was fairly close to the stable and the driveway. And I can remember cuddling down, you know, on an icy night, and upper New York State can be very, very cold, and hearing Father go out, quite quietly. We had a hired man, usually, who by this time had the horse hitched up and ready to go -- and (I remember) Father going out and starting off into the icy wastes of Jefferson County.

T -- And a lot of snow.

G -- And an awful lot of snow.

T -- Did you used to worry about him or did you just feel cozy in your bed...

G -- Just cozy. I didn't have to ...But, Mother..

T -- She must have worried about him.

G -- Well, she was hardy stuff. I think they were. It was so much more difficult a life than anything we know today -- anything I know.

T -- We are so used to just buying everything. Did your mother have to make a lot more things for herself and for you than we do now?

G-- Yes . But where did she get stockings and things of that sort? I'm sure I don't know.

T -- At the general store?

G -- At the general store, probably.

T -- I bet Belleville had a really neat general store.

G -- Well, it was a terrific store. (L) I went into it not too long ago where it stood, and I couldn't believe it.

T -- Why?

G -- It was tiny and it was used for something else by that time.

I'll tell you a story. My cloths were almost all of them made over from cloths that two of my aunts, who were teachers in Denver, Colorado and who had very good cloths, and my half-sister, who by this time was a secretary in New York. She also had good cloths. Their things were sent to my mother to use if possible. They weren't very suitable materials for a little girl, but nevertheless Mother made them into something I could wear and probably some of them she was able to adapt for her own use. And I well remember the first brand-new dress I ever had. It was blue flannel, dark blue flannel, a very pretty dark blue, not the navy blue, and it had what was called a guimpe, g-u-i-m-p-e. That word was used a great deal in those days. It was kind of a jumper dress, you see, with a little blouse under it, of pale blue silk.

T -- Was the little blouse the guimpe?

G -- Yes, and I wore it to a party -- a little girl's party -- and I was terribly excited about it. And I called everybody's attention to my brand-new dress and I said, and the word went forth in Belleville, because the Chapman family were regarded as (L) kind of an odd little group. I said "Just think, even the thread was new!" (L) I could almost make your grandfather weep with that story. (L)

T -- So she made a lot of cloths. What about food? Did you have different food than we have now?

G -- Different food? Awfully plain fare. In fact a friend of mine in later yeas speaking about our family said "Plain living and high thinking."

T -- You did read a lot.

G -- Because there was so much reading. The house was full of books even then. And of course there was no public library. Father and MOther read everything and they were poor you know. We were poor. We had enough to eat, I assume and could keep warm.

T -- The doctor was not the rich man in the town.

G -- Oh! Would you like me to tell you about the way my father was paid? He was pain in -- by people who realized that even a doctors's family had to have food, and that they couldn't subsist on just promises and all that. And there were many fine, honorable farmers's families around that wanted to repay Dr. chapman for whatever he did, and he never spared himself. Well, anyway, I can remember going out on the little back porch of a summer morning when Mother would say "Come and see what's out here" and it would be a basket, you know, with potatoes and all kinds of vegetables and maybe a chicken and things like that.

T -- So you never quite knew what might come around.

G -- Oh no, you didn't know, and a ...

T -- Well, some people must have paid with money.

G -- Well, of course, some people must have. We must have had some cash.

T -- But, I am sure what you would remember would be the baskets.

G -- Would be the baskets, you know, because the meals came along alright.

T -- Did you ever get awful things that you hated?

G -- No, I don't remember anything like that, Fish I think occasionally. After all Lake Ontario was only 6 miles away.

T -- But you didn't have a farm?

G -- We had a garden, and quite a good garden as I remember it.

T -- Did you can things?

G -- Yes.

T -- And what about in the winter? Weren't the houses really cold? I mean, I suppose, just part of it was heated? I bet your bedrooms weren't warm, when you went to bed.

G -- No I don't think so. I think they were cold, but we had a furnace in our house, a coal furnace. I don't remember ever being cold in the house.

T -- Well, you remember sniggling down into your bed.

G -- Oh yes, I do remember that, but I don't remember ever suffering at all with the cold. I walked I suppose half a mile to district school. Remember I was twelve when we moved away so it's things that I remember under that age and once the drifts were so high -- we went you know just the same -- but once we went when the drifts were so high that a tunnel had been made for the children to go through in one bad spot.

T -- Oh gosh, how neat, did you love it?

G -- Loved it! (L)

T -- But when i think about what children wore -- especially little girls -- you didn't wear nice snow suits. A big coat? And some boots? Did you play out in the snow? Do you remember that?

G -- Oh, yes.. But what did we wear? Probably quite stout shoes, laced up, and rubbers and warm stockings.

T -- Did you have shoe buttons on your shoes?

G-- Yes, And a button hook.

T-- And I'm sure you only had one pair of shoes, that lasted for a long time?

G -- That's right, undoubtedly.

T -- No sneakers, sandals, track shoes.

G -- I think in summer I probably wore high shoes, well I don't mean really high you know, but with six or eight buttons, Not even oxfords.

T -- The nearest town was Watertown.

G -- Watertown, Twenty miles away.

T -- Did you go there very much?

G -- Never! I don't think I had ever been there when we moved when I was twelve. I don't think so. When we went en famille to my mother's parents' farm in Southern New York State, Allegheny, Cattaraugus County, my father drove us up to Adams and we there went aboard the train. And in Rochester we always changed trains. And I can remember the flies in the station there and how awful it was.

T -- They still have a pretty grubby station.

G -- Is there? Oh it was awful but I don't think we thought so. And Mother put up a lunch for us. I don't think there was a diner aboard any train that we took that took us to Allegheny. I don't think so. And she always said that by the time we got to a town called Richland, a little way beyond Adams, where we got the train, that the boys had eaten all their share of the lunch and this would have been quite early in the morning. (L) And I remember when my youngest brother, Donald, who of course was one of our party, was just a baby. Mother had left the --- whatever milk she had for him ---I haven't any idea --- there was no such thing as far as I know of these prepared foods. i don't think so, but she was through nursing him and so there must have been something. I think there was kind of a powdery something or other that was put in milk -- what was the name of it? Malted milk. And i think he was on some sort of a malted milk diet. And we found ourselves -- Mother had left this in a cool spot in the house -- no refrigerator -- I don't know -- in the basement, I guess. And she forgot it. And I can remember her saying "Well, we can't go on without it." For now it wasn't going to b e long before the train came and Father taking the horse, which was a very speedy little animal and tearing back to Belleville six miles, which doesn't sound very bad, you know, and getting back just in time to hand the milk bottles to the conductor. We had already gone about the train and he was holding the train.

T -- Oh, Gunga. Yea, but six miles there and six miles back -- that's twelve miles!

G -- Well, Father was a good horseman and he had a good horse.

(Talk about the taping process)

T -- This is a very easy way of doing it. You don't feel very conscious of it do you?

G -- No, no. In fact, I feel I am talking so naturally that I can't believe it would be very interesting.

T --Well, it is interesting because everything is so different now. Even for me, who is a lot closer to you age that Lisa and Ann (my daughters), I just can't imagine that life. I never have had to do the kinds of things that you had to do. And everything is so easy for us.

G -- I was going to speak about our bathroom, if you could call it that. Well, we had to go outdoors. That is why I wondered if you wanted to have this (taped) or not. We had nothing in the world but a privy. And I can remember my MOther and Father, Father being a doctor and Mother being a person of habit and programs, and so forth, we were all supposed to go to the bathroom before we went to school, you know and do the proper things. And I can remember the feeling of that icy seat.

T -- Oh, that must have been awful.

G -- It was. And Mother always kept the inside of the privy with interesting pictures from magazines and things so we had something to at least look at. (L) Oh, but it was so cold!

T -- You must have been so excited when you got your first indoor plumbing.

G -- Oh, I couldn't believe it. (L) And a telephone, too. I Didn't come long afterward -- well, awhile. Our own telephone, and that was in WAtertown, of course.

T -- I wanted to ask you -- was the school in belleville a one-room school? You know, were all the grades together?

G -- Yes, I think two -- what we called the little room and the big room. And the big room was for the older ones, of course. And a man and his wife, people by the name of Littlefield, had charge of us.

T -- Were they good teachers?

G -- No, I don't believe so. i had a dreadful tie when we moved to Watertown being fitted into a grade. I was so weak on arithmetic, you know, but I read everything. Read everything and listened to Mother reading to Father night after night, you know.

T -- what kinds of things did they read?

G -- They read Dickens and not only that, they went down to Syracuse to hear Dickens speak. And I have wondered a good many times how they ever did that. Must have driven to Adams and taken the rain. They were great Dickens enthusiasts and they would love the way Jim (Rugen), you know, is just an authority on Dickens and he really is.

T -- I can't help looking back at that as a really good time. I know it really wasn't exactly. There was a lot of sickness and death.

G -- Death then that could be prevented today. I remember a little girl that I played with, and she was kind of a connection of the family, Ruth Littlefield, who died of -- probably diphtheria. A harsh life, it really was. Quite a lot of sickness and sorrow that we children were acquainted with early.

T -- It does seem that things like reading at night -- that sounds really nice.

G -- Oh, it was wonderful. My bedroom door, they would leave it open and I could hear it. I suppose I went to sleep while my mother was reading. I think of Parkman's History of Europe, probably, and 3 volumes. But then they read novels, too, and they read the novels as they came out and were very excited about them.

T -- Where did they get the books?

G -- Why, I don't know -- they must have bought them. Where would they get them?

T -- Maybe they sent away for them.

G -- Probably magazines that had serials. I know there was quite a lot of that, especially with Dickens. Dickens was serialized. And my mother felt that she wasn't very well-educated and joined the Chatauqua circuit.

T -- Did she?

G -- Oh, yes and graduated.

T -- How did that work exactly? The Chatauqua Circuit was the tent programs that came around?

G -- Well, yes, that was part of it, but the Chatauqua educational program -- people like my Mother in little country towns formed clubs and it was all very well planned and Mother did a lot of her -- I think quite a lot of her reading to Father consisted of things that she was studying.

T-- I see. And then you took a test or something?

G -- Yes. I don't know just how that was done. I was a giddy child and didn't pay much attention, you know. I remember when she went to Chatauqua in New York State, and that's where they wont on their honeymoon, which was quite typical of my Father and Mother -- to go to Chatauqua and learn something on their honeymoon. (L) And Mother went back when she graduated from that course, or whatever it was.

T -- There was a good bit of traveling around, wasn't there.

G -- Well they somehow managed it. They just felt they had to do some things. And my Mother got to hear some good music, but I don't know just how she did that -- because she was a great music lover. I don't know -- you see her memoirs wouldn't help us very much.

T -- No, because she didn't write too much about her own life.

G -- No, she did not. It was back in her childhood and her girlhood. That seemed to be the important part of her life, which quite bothered me, you know, naturally, I was an egotist.

T -- Well, what about the move. Why did you move to Watertown?

G -- My father was a politician, always. he was a strong, wait a minute, I hate to put it quite that way. A politician -- I don't like that word. he was interested in politics, always, and interested in the government no matter what it was. State, federal, a little town like Belleville, it didn't make any difference. Just how it worked, and so on, and he ran for the county clerkship and won. He was a strong Republican and that's why we moved to Watertown.

T -- Did he give up his practice then?

G -- He gave up his practice and later, when he was defeated he had that job I should judge, for 12 years or so. Long enough to feather his nest a little , which needed feathering I'm sure. (L) And send his son, Ross, to college and so forth, but when that time was up he thought -- and MOther encouraged him because she thought he should try it -- he tried to establish a little practice for children, to take care of children in Watertown. He got an office and all that. But watertown was too well-equipped with doctors and by that time he was getting old, or seemed old, and I don't think that's worth going into, except that he finally retired from that and closed out his office. Those long, long years of practicing medicine and the long, long drives and awful hours, you know, night after night, and getting his rest where he could and when he could, and so fourth, took a toll. And before that, you see, he had been tin the Civil War and had an arduous three years or something like that . And so, I think he grew old early. He died -- of course then he seemed an old man, but I think Father was 77 when he died and many men live longer than that now, many of them.

T -- Then, your life in Watertown must have been a lot different.

G-- Oh, very. We settled right into bathrooms, and things. And my Mother wasn't awfully well there, I suppose the menopause came along in there somewhere, ands eh wasn't awfully well and so we always had a good cook and sort of a semi-house keeper. And in Belleville we had someone who came in to clean and do the washing and things like that. Mother always -- was never without some help. But, in Watertown she had to have somebody that would practically take over until she was well enough. And that I imagine went on several years, as I think of it. I know she was in a wheelchair for awhile, and I am sure it was connected with the menopause. But, remember, I was 12 or 14 and life went on. I didn't -- I don't understand it -- I should think I would have been much more concerned than I was. If Father showed and concern then I was , you know, then I was concerned.

T -- Well, you sort of took your cues from whatever they seemed to be feeling about it. The school, moving to the other school must have been hard.

G -- Oh, very, they didn't know where to put me! (L)

Side 2

(garbled -- Gunga may be speaking of her brother, Ross.)

G --...27 years ago, when he died, about the time Sandy was born, I remember even then he said to me "Margery, think of what we have seen" and that was 27 or 28 years ago. Sandy I think is 29 now.

T -- Well, another part I would like you to talk about is when you got married and how you met Gramps and all that (G laughing) I love that part (more laughter)

G -- Well, I will tell you about it (L) What a match!

T -- He'd been at Princeton. No, he'd graduated from Princeton.

G -- No he was still in Princeton and he had another year to go. Wait a minute. I think it was at the end of his junior year.

T -- So that would have been in 1910.

G -- But he had to do a civil engineering class to which he belonged. Different projects during the summer which counted toward their degree, I suppose. They were supposed to do some practical work. Probably whoever ran it checked over whatever ob this person came up with, you know. I don't know how well-organized it was. To make a long story short -- he had several offers. I t doesn't make any difference how much money he made. I t wasn't with that in mind. I think he made very little, oh very little. It was a question of experience and he went to Olivia's father, Uncle Millbank Caldwell (?). Now we come to the aristocratic end of your background. We were awfully plain, simple people, the Chapman's. Pretty plain, pretty simple. you'd have said so. But then the Valentines, quite different, specially in the New York outfit, you know, from which Harry had come. That really is a story, but anyway ---Uncle Millbank Caldwell had gone to Princeton and Harry said, when Dad was trying to make up his mind what to do about these jobs, and I think Uncle Millbank had steered Dad towards going to Princeton in the first place from Mt. Hermon, "Well, see Millbank, see what he things about these different offers you have had." So he went to see Millbank who said something like --"well I think that this double track railroad that is going to be laid up between Richland and Adams and some other place would be a good experience as anything you can have depending on what they offered in the way of a little authority" and so forth. So that's why he came up. And he said, "moreover I have a feeling, have you ever had a girl, Dick"? Oh yes, he'd had some girls but nothing serious. "Well, I have a feeling there's a girl up there." I've always thought probably that's why it all happened.

T -- He had that on his mind.

G -- Although he wasn't quite that kind, you know. Kind of independent. Anyway -- so he came up to Watertown and lived in a boarding house and fell in with two young men who were doing precisely the same type of things. One by the name of Vollmer and one by the name of Voorhees, -- and Valentine. And my father was not taken with your grandfather's very ingenuous and articulate and , well, what's the word i want, well kind of brash, he was a little brash, you know, and he wasn't quite taken with that and he said "I'd like to know more about these 3 Vs. And if they become Dorchester, Dawes and Deems when they go to the next town." (lots of laughter)

There as a square in Watertown. the girls walked around one way and the boys the other. And the band played in the middle of the square and it was great fun. And if your father and mother were like my father and mother you didn't walk very long or very late, you know, but still you had a little of it and, anyway, Gramps went out walking one night and he belonged to a society and Princeton that had their own had band and things that marked them and he saw a hat band that he was familiar with which belonged to a boy by the name of Bingley whom I knew quite well and he said hello and the two talked and George Bingley said "well you ought to meet some girls while you're here" and that's the way it happened.

And I thought -- Why he is so fresh, not with me, particularly, but he was so fresh with his hostess when he went to a girl's house and had one of those innocent, ingenuous, ridiculous, informal evenings that in that day we indulged in. I suppose we put records on the gramophone. I think we played parlor games, and I'm trying to think of the first evening when i met your grandfather and thought he was so fresh. our hostess's name was Margaret Avery and she was a great giggler, and everything he said struck her so funny that it went to his head and he was very young and he didn't quite know when to stop. I think we played some records on one of those gramophones we called them, with the big horn, you know. I'm sure we did that, and ah, we told stories and played some parlor games and had something to eat and probably it was all over by half past eleven, and I was already, what, twenty, but father didn't like it at all if I was out beyond twelve.

The night we got engaged i was out after twelve. And I came in and he and Mother always stayed awake till one of ewe lamb came in To boys could go, you know. (L) Anyway, I heard his voice, from their room and he said, "I have had just about enough of this young Valentine." I was out until after twelve and I certainly was twenty. With which I burst into tears -- busted into tears -- and I went up to my room and I said, "Well, I think I very likely will marry this young Valentine" and probably banged my door. But, anyway, Mother came up presently and she said "Your father feels dreadfully because he things you probably had a very happy experience tonight and exciting, and so forth, and he didn't know that and we'll talk about it all another time, but he feels very badly."

T -- Oh, they were nice, weren't they?

G -- Oh, just lovely.

T -- So you got engaged that same summer?

G -- We called it an "understanding." We had known each other about eight weeks, you see, that was all. July and August.

T -- Was it getting to the time he was going to have to leave?

G -- That's right. He wanted a little time at home here in Stafford with his parents before going back to college, and so that was that.

T -- And then did you write each other?

G -- Oh, yes. We got acquainted really by letter as much as anything. And I went down to Princeton once or twice. You see, I ought to know whether that was the end of his sophomore or Junior year. Well.

T -- And you were in college, too.

G -- Yes, and I went to Simmons that same fall that I met him, that summer.

T -- Did you finish?

G -- Oh, I wish I had. I took library training, but only for one year, and the course was a three-year course, or something like that . But I had a feeling that my mother wasn't very well and could use my help, but that wasn't the real reason. I think it was financial, and the tuition , which today would seem nothing probably seemed king of staggering to my father if he wasn't able to do anything, and he wasn't.

T -- And Ross was finished.

G -- Ross was finished. He graduated from Syracuse University and then went out to Ann Arbor and took medicine out there where my father had gone and my uncle , too.

T-- So then you were married after Gramps graduated from Princeton.

G -- He had one year of working in the mill. We were married in 1912.

T -- So you waited for a while.

G-- Well, we waited one year, and we had been engaged for quite a little while, you see.

T -- And the wedding was in Watertown.

G - That's right and probably thirty people at the most in our house and lunch server there after. And we took the train to Albany where we spent the night and the next day came on to Springfield and had lunch at Forbes and Wallace (a department store) and bought a rug for our living room and Gramps had very carefully measured before he left the little rented house...

T -- Had you seen that house yet?

G -- Hadn't even seen it, no. But we bought a rug and it was so pretty. And probably and Asminister, or whatever they were called, I don't know, but the colors were so pretty and that was very exciting and then we must have come by train to Palmer and were met there by a Ruby, one of the Ruby family. Don't put any of this in there, it's too silly.

T -- Were they from Safford?

G --Yes.

T -- And then you came by horse and buggy down here.

G -- Saw my house, for the first time. (L) And then two or three days later started off on this camping trip.

T -- Okay. So the camping trip was not getting from Watertown to here. That was a different thing.

G -- Yes, two or three days I think we waited, then we took the horse and buggy and ..

T -- Where did you go?

G -- We went over to, uh--I tried to call it Black Pond the other day, but I don't think that was the name of it. It's on Rte. 890 which is off the Union Rd. It's right over toward Storrs, you know. And I can't think of the name of that lake. And we had planned to -- uh -- and we had a row boat. Gramps had taken that up with some people, some men he knew, that he knew lived over there. And we could have their row boat. We rowed over to -- with this boy, this Ruby boy, to carry provender and so forth or help with hit and put up the tent and all that. We got over to the island where we had hoped to camp and the snakes were so (L)-- all over there. (more L) I wanted to be a hardy camper-outer (L), but your grandfather could always weaken, too. So we came back to the mainland and found a spot that was a little more, that seemed a little more open, not quite so dank. this more or less for your ear, not too many years ago when Gramps was still live we were out driving one day and he said lets's go and see if we an make our ay out there and see if the toilet I made for you is still standing. Well, it wasn't, but the tree against which it stood still was and here was this broken lumber. (L)

T -- He actually built you a little building -- he had built you a little privy? And he took the wood out there?

G -- Yes, and made a little hole from Grandma to sit on. (L)

T -- Had you ever done anything like that before -- camping?

G -- NO.

T -- Did you ever again?

G -- NO, I don't think so.

T -- WAs it fun?

G -- yes, we had a good time. Gramps knew quite a lot of people, you know , and he knew a lot more of the farmers around there. And the Barrows family, Raymond and his sister, Florence, and their mother lived not far away and we went over there one night and, I think, had supper, and walked out back with the moon up, you know.

T -- Oh, it sounds very romantic.

G -- It was very nice. And we just built a little fire, you know, and do our cooking and heating water, and so forth. And I have always remembered how we worked it. It was in September and we had sweet corn--we had tomatoes -- and things like that. At that time I was trying to be a vegetarian because the Valentines all were.

T -- Oh, was Gramps?

G -- Well, yes, but kind of half-hearted. he'd gone along with his mother. Mrs. Valentine was ahead of her day in a lot of ways and one of them was fresh fruit and fresh vegetables mainly, you know, and coarse grains and what's called "nature foods" today. she was way ahead o Of her day so that's the way we started out anyway. But I was trying to think how e worked it so he could shave. (L) I had to get the skins of the tomatoes, because he never would touch a skin, and cook up the corn and then he saved in the water that was left. (L) And then we took that time to boil some eggs and had them hard boiled. He and I sued to go over that sometimes and have a good laugh.

(at this point Gunga said the thought that was enough for that day. We never had another chance to continue, but I am very glad we had that one opportunity to experiment on lovely prong day in 1977.)

Writings of Agnes "Donna" McD. Chapman. Submitted by her Great grand-daughter

Note: Some entries on this site may not directly relate to Belleville but are connected in some way to an individual
that was born in Belleville or lived in Belleville as part of the local community.

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