The Use and Need of the Life of Carrie A. Nation | Page 7

married. My mother was a widow when she

married my father. She had married Will Caldwell, a son of Capt.
Caldwell, who died in Sangamon County, Ill., he had freed his negroes
and moved there from Kentucky. Will Caldwell died after three years,
leaving my mother with two children. Both of them died at my
grandfather Campbell's in Mercer county, Kentucky, before she
married my father.
I was about four years old when my grandmother Moore died. She
lived on a farm in Garrard County, about two miles from my father.
She used to ride a mare called "Kit." Whenever we would see grandma
coming up the avenue, the whole lot of children, white and black, ran to
meet her. She always carried on the horn of her saddle a handbag, then
called a "reticule," and in that she always brought us some little treat,
most generally a cut off of a loaf of sugar, that used to be sold in the
shape of a long loaf of bread. We would follow her down to the stile,
where she would get off, and delight us all by taking something good to
eat out of the "reticule." We would tie old Kit, and then take our turn in
petting the colt. The first grief I remember to have had was when I
heard of the death of my grandmother. I wanted to see her so badly and
go to the funeral, and for weeks I would go off by myself and cry about
her death. I used to love to lie and sit on her grave at the back of the
garden. Older people often forget the sorrows of childhood, but I felt
keenly the injustice of not being allowed to see her dead face and do to
this day.
We left that home, when I was about five years old, for a place about
two miles from Danville, Kentucky. The house had a flat roof, the first
one built in that county; it had an observatory on top. Our nearest
neighbors were Mr. Banford's family, Mr. Caldwell, and Mr. Spears. Dr.
Jackson and Dr. Smith were both our physicians, and my father used to
hire his physicians by the year. Dr. Jackson was a bachelor and said he
was going to wait for me, and I believed him. I remember visiting Dr.
Smith in Danville and seeing a human skeleton for the first time. I also
saw leeches he used in bleeding. I remember when one of my little
brothers was born, they told me Dr. Smith found him in a hollow stump.
After that I spent hours out in the woods looking in hollow stumps for
babies.
My mother's father was James Campbell, born in King and Queens
County, Virginia. His parents were from Scotland. He was married

twice. By his first wife he had two sons, William and Whitaker.
William married and died young, and I heard, left one child, a daughter.
Uncle "Whitt" lived to be an old man. The second time my grandfather
married a Miss Bradshaw. He had four sons and six daughters. I used to
stay at grandma's with my aunt Sue. When my mother would take long
trips or visits, she would send the younger children, with my nurse
Betsy, over there to stay until she returned. The only thing I construe
into a cross word, that my grandfather ever spoke to me, was when I
was running upstairs and stumbled and he said: "Jump up, and try it
again, my daughter." I was so humiliated by the rebuke that I hid from
him for several days. He was a Baptist deacon for years. When
gentlemen called on my aunts, lie would go in the parlor at 10 o'clock
in the evening and wind the big clock. He would then ask the young
men if he should have their horses put up. This was the signal to either
retire or leave. He never went to bed until everyone else had retired.
My grandfather lived in Mercer County, not far from Harrodsburg. My
grandmother was an invalid for years, and kept her room. My aunt Sue
was housekeeper. In the dining room was a large fireplace. The
teakettle was brought in at breakfast, water was boiled by being set on a
"trivet," over some coals of fire.
Every morning my grandfather would put in a glass some sugar, butter
and brandy, then pour hot water over it, and, while the family were
sitting around the room, waiting for breakfast, he would go to each, and
give to those who wished, a spoonful of this toddy, saying: "Will you
have a taste, my daughter, or my son?" He never gave but one spoonful,
and then he drank what was left himself. This custom was never
omitted. I