ID: Emily (Fairfield) Duncan autobiography, page 5
Annie McNiel, the daughter of her mother's sister, and the two became great friends. Finding that her father was planning to marry Mrs. Howard and further, that he had agreed to stand the expense of educating her daughter, Emma, my mother made plans to leave home. She felt an added sense of injury in that no great sum of money had ever been spent on her education, though her father was financially well able to have given her such advantages. I do not know that he had actually refused her the money but, at least, such was her feeling in the crisis. Letters had been received from California especially from her brother, William, inviting her to visit them, so having persuaded Annie McNiel to accompany her, in the year 1861 [actually January 1862] my mother went to New York and there set sail for Panama, thence across the isthmus and by boat to San Francisco, where she was met by some member of the family and taken to the "ranch" as we have always called it. Annie McNiel accompanied her to her brother's home. She afterward married a neighbor, a Mr. Hutton but lived only a few years.
To the town bred fastidious Eastern girl, life on the ranch seemed very rough and primitive, although the only specific incident I can recall having heard her mention was the fact that her sister Barbara's little daughter, Mary Ann, was wearing black panties and she lost no time in making her white ones of flour sacks with lace trimming!
By this time there were several children in the Keyes and McDonnell homes. Hamilton and Mary Ann at Keyes, and Charley, Ann, and Mary at the McDonnells. The two families lived in the greatest harmony and their association meant a great deal in this new land where neighbors were few and roads almost entirely lacking. A journey to town was quite an event and when a trip as far as Napa was undertaken it meant staying at least one night, sometimes longer, before returning and although they often stayed with hospitable friends, notably a family named Guesford living just on the edge of town, it was sometimes more convenient to stop at Napa Hotel, where there was a handsome man named [David] Fairfield behind the desk. This young man was quick to note the sparkling brown eyes and vivacious manner of the newly arrived Eastern girl and soon managed to make her acquaintance and gain her permission to call upon her at her brother's home. With a smart livery team, he covered the distance between Napa and the ranch in the shortest possible time and so successfully pressed his suit that in the following year, 1862, on the second of June, they were married [actually it was more than two years after Ann arrived; their marriage certificate certifies they were wed June 9, 1864].
It was in the original cabin built on the Keyes place, home of her sister, Barbara, that my mother chose to be married. As I remember it, it was a tumble down ruin, covered completely with old fashioned pink climbing roses and used as a sort of tool shed, but always my mother's eyes rested upon it with fond remembrance of that far away time when romance came into her life.
That same year, 1862 [that Ann migrated], word came to my mother from Illinois that her father had married Mrs. Howard [indeed, it was January 30, 1862, only a couple weeks after Ann’s departure]. In 1865 he sold his interests in the [Buford] plow factory and was for a short time owner of a wagon factory [actually, that was in between the Deere factory and the Buford factory partnerships], but this he soon disposed of and retired from