ID: Emily (Fairfield) Duncan autobiography, page 11

In Napa I first started to school. Always ambitious for her children, my mother sought the best for us and May was entered in the preparatory department of Napa College while I accompanied her to the kindergarten connected with the same school. How I loved the pretty colored papers, the gay beads and the wools which we were taught to fashion into mats and woven pictures. But our affairs did not prosper. Papa failed to find permanent employment and soon we moved to the other side of town - away from the college and here I entered the South Public School in the lowest grade, then called the eighth. The house we rented faced one side of a public square called "the Common." Here the boys of the neighborhood played ball and cows belonging to the neighbors were tied out to feed. We had a large lot surrounded by large acacia trees. Just across the Common was the school house and on another side was a two-story house behind a row of old pine trees where lived a family by the name of Duncan. Ruth was a class or two above me in school but I sometimes went over to her house to play after school. She was a quiet, gentle girl with large brown eyes. I admired her very much but was quick to run and hide if her big brother Frank came home from school while I was there. I thought he looked terribly cross and was quite afraid of him!

While we were living in this house, Papa was called suddenly to Eureka by the death of Uncle Charlie, whose business was left in a very muddled state. He had still been running the boarding place but had expanded it into an amusement resort called" South Park" and had gradually added a race track with boarding stables, a base ball field, a roller skating rink, a rifle range, and open air band stand. he was not a good business manager, however, and at the time of his death, the debts were overwhelming. So Papa left us in Napa and went to Eureka to try to salvage something from the estate.

It must have been a thin time at home. Mamma and the older children planted a vegetable garden and with a cow, we eked out a living. May took up a sewing machine agency, but was not very successful. During the fruit season she found work in an apple drying plant and there met and became engaged to Gilmore Duncan, although she was only sixteen years old. Despairing of settling Uncle Charlie's estate in a reasonable length of time, Papa at last sent for us to join him in Eureka and we went to live at South Park. How poor Mamma hated the place. Papa was still keeping it going, trying to make it pay until it could be disposed of and the debts liquidated. We had baseball Sundays and holidays, races with the attendant betting and drinking, and all the noisy, boisterous crowds who frequent such a place. Our living quarters were directly behind the saloon, just a hall between, and it had been the custom for "ladies" to be served in our parlor. This was very distressing to Mamma who could only try to keep her children away from it all, as much as possible. The place was still a men's boarding house and kitchen help was kept to do the cooking. We had a half-breed Indian girl and Mamma was terribly worried when May showed a tendency to treat her as a friend and equal.