ID: Emily (Fairfield) Duncan autobiography, page 4

The firm name was Deere, Tate and Co. Shortly after, a Mr. Gould bought an interest and the name was changed to Deere, Tate, and Gould. At about this time, the factory was moved to Moline, Illinois, where a better site and more adequate water power could be procured. [the factory started in Moline and was never moved]. Mr. Deere and his family and the Tates were always the best of friends and spent much time together and the son, whom the girls delighted in calling "Charlie Dear," was often with them. However, my grandfather was of a very independent nature and liked to carry out his own ideas. He valued John Deere as a friend and respected him as a business associate, but it was inevitable that occasions should arise when he would disagree with him in matters of business detail. No matter how right Mr. Deere may have been (and time has shown him to have been a good business man) what my grandfather wanted was to direct things himself and the position of junior partner and less stockholder did not long satisfy him. Accordingly, in 1865, he sold his interests in the business to Mr. Deere and severed his relations with the firm. [Actually, their partnership ended February 13, 1852.]

During the years my grandfather was associated in business with Mr. Deere, great changes had taken place in his family life. In 1857 [on May 30] my grandmother died after having been for sometime a semi-invalid. Her two older children, William and Barbara, had left the home some time before. Barbara married Marshall Keyes and they, with their little son, Hamilton, had removed to California about 1854 [actually, Marshall moved to California in the fall of 1850, joining William, who had moved there in 1846 – driving a team for Kellogg in a famous overland trip that year]. Here they had taken up government land in the first range of mountains at the head of Knights Valley, about thirteen miles north of Calistoga [William McDonnell had received a government land grant for his service in Company A of Fremont’s Batallion in the Mexican War]. So wild was the country at that time that theirs [maybe William’s, but not Barbara’s] was the first wagon to be driven through it. They did not stop in the valley where level land could have been had for the taking, but, attracted by the abundance of water in the clear mountain streams, set their stakes in the rolling hills and proceeded to make a home [the land is privately owned and virtually unchanged as of 2004]. They were soon joined by Barbara's brother, William, [as stated, he came first, in 1846] who took up the adjoining homestead. He married Eleanor Graves who, as a child, was a member of the ill-fated Donnor party [also 1846] and one of the few to survive its horrors. Thus, my mother was left with her father to care for the invalid mother. This was truly a labor of love and occupied her time and thought through the years of her young womanhood. As long as my mother lived there was a special tone of voice in which she said "my mother", which spoke of the deepest love and devotion. Nor was she alone in this. In my grandfather's diary he expresses his great sorrow in the loss of his "dear Ann" and tells in detail the symptoms and failing strength of each of "the last 109 days of the life of my beloved wife." She was a very devout Methodist of the old school and my mother was brought up in that religion. I still have her hymnal [in the possession of Duncan descendant Kirk Cavas as of 2004] and some other books of a religious nature which were highly prized by my mother.

Two or three [actually five] years after the death of my grandmother, my grandfather began taking an interest in a widow [divorcee?] by the name of Margaret [Rathbun] Howard, who had a young daughter, Emma. This was very displeasing to my mother who could not bear to see her own mother so quickly supplanted. My mother's hearing had begun to fail, and about this time she made several trips to New York seeking relief from a condition which was to grow gradually worse until, in later years, she became almost entirely deaf. I think it was on one of these visits to New York that she became acquainted with her cousin,