INTRODUCTION

While visiting my sons in Pittsburgh, I received a letter from my daughter in which she proposed that on my return home, we should write my recollections together.

For some years my friends had urged me to do this, but while I enjoy reminiscing, the ordeal of writing my memories all by myself had caused me to procrastinate, so that this proposition seemed a way out. But in view of the fact that my daughter is confined in a plaster cast to rectify a fractured spine and while being able to move about her diversions were very limited, I decided we could spend an interesting winter in this way and possibly leave something of value to my children and grandchildren.

So in collaboration with my eldest child, Elizabeth, I shall record some local and family history, together with many things I remember in my eighty-five years, most of these years having been spent in the place where I was born in the home of my children's grandparents.

D. H. P.

November 2, 1929