THE STORY OF MY LIFE
By Ellen Julia Gilliat Smith Emerick With Rosemary Smith

I was born on September 10 1900 in Rugby, a small settlement in the Tennessee mountains, which had been founded in 1880 by the English author, Thomas Hughes, and settled by people from England. I was the first of ten children born to my parents, Vivian and Tina Tompkins Gilliat. For the first eleven years of my life we lived in the house known as "The Gardens," which my father's parents had moved into in 1884 when they settled in Rugby.

My paternal grandfather, William Henry Gilliat, of Oxton, England (near Liverpool) was a tobacco agent between England and The States. On one of his trips to this country he married my grandmother, Ellen McDaniel, of Clarksville, Tennessee, on November 2 1857. They returned to England where seven children were bornl William Henry, Eugene, Ellen (" Nell" ), my father and his twin sister, Clara, born in 1875, Bessie and Lelia. His work took him back and forth across the ocean, and my grandmother made six trips with him. They lived for a brief time in Moorhead, Minnesota, before finally making their home in Rugby.

At that time the oldest son, William Henry, stayed in England and nothing further is known of him. Nell stayed with grandparents at Cheltenham England until she grew up, eventually coming to this country where she married and settled in Clarksville Tennessee. Eugene and the younger children came to America with their parents. Eugene moved to California after he was grown and both Bessie and Lelia died young, before their mother. By the time I was born my grandfather had died and my grandmother passed away in 1906.

Rugby was a tiny town in which there were just a church, a school, a store, a library, a print shop, and about 17 homes. My father, who had grown up there from the age of 4 was a partner in the store. The school was a two-story building with the one room schoolroom on the first floor. The second floor, and occasionally the school room were used for community meetings and festivities. To this day the little Episcopal Church still has the original organ and lamps (now electrified) that had been brought from England.

Our house had a parlor where the door was kept closed most of the time, but my Grandmother Gilliat would take us in there and play the piano for us, songs like 'Just A Song At Twilight', 'Two Little Maids', and 'Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms', 'In The Gloaming' was one that she particularly loved. Our house also had a living room, dining room, kitchen, pantry, and both a front and back porch. Upstairs there were four small bedrooms. There was no electricity or running water in Rugby at that time and of course, no in door plumbing. The houses were lighted by candles or kerosene lamps and heated by fireplaces and wood stoves.

There was a two-story log cabin on our property, where we children played. There were all sorts of interesting things there, which had been brought from England, including a cider press. It was a lovely, big cabin, very well built with a front and a back door. Years later I learned that it was in this cabin that my mother had been born. Her father had owned the land that the Rugby settlement bought and after the purchase he took his family to the town of Armithwaite, 5 miles away.

Down the hillside was a spring where there were great grapevines that we could swing on. That was where our drinking water came from. In addition to the log cabin there was a big barn, a little barn, and a fenced-in chicken yard. There was a big apple orchard with a number of different kinds of apples. The property got its name 'The Gardens' because of its large experimental gardens which grew vegetables, fruits and flowers. We had a hired local man to help with the cows, pigs, horses, (both farm and buggy horses) chickens and turkeys. There was a hired girl to help in the house. She lived with us and only went home to visit her own family on Sundays.

In Rugby there was a community Christmas party every year and an Easter egg hunt at the Church on Easter. Everyone dyed eggs for the occasion. On May Day we put baskets of flowers on the doors or porches of our neighbours. We made the baskets ourselves.

Almost every Sunday after church or Sunday School, we went to my maternal Grand Parents' home in Armithwaite. The wagon ride seemed so long. There was always chicken and dumplings. (Perhaps that is why I have always liked chicken so much.) Since my grandparents had eleven children of their own, (of whom my mother was the second eldest,) there was a houseful. My mother's youngest sisters were twin girls a year younger than myself, with whom my sister Bessie and I liked to play. There was always music played on a violin, a banjo, and a harmonica, (mouth organ). My father played the violin. The music was mostly old English ballads and love songs, not Tennessee mountain music.

My maternal grandfather, James Madison Tompkins, whose father had come from York, Pennsylvania, was a jack of all trades. He shod horses, pulled teeth, had the town post office in his home, and had a big farm where he raised all the food they ate, even the corn, which he took to the mill to be ground into cornmeal. He also had orchards, and raised grapes that they ate or made into jelly. Those weekly visits to that bountiful farm were very happy times, but they were soon to end. After we left Rugby in 1912, none of us ever saw my grandparents again.

I did not start to school until my sister Bessie, 2 years younger, was old enough to go too, but once I started, I loved it. The schoolteacher all the time I went to school in Rugby was a Mr. Stockton. Where he lived and where he went in the summer, I do not know, he was not one of the homeowners there but he taught me to love reading. Soon I was going to the Rugby library to borrow books. (This library had been filled with fine books when the Rugby settlement was founded, and was probably one of the best libraries in the whole state. It has survived, nth the original books, all these years.) For a time, the Iibrarian thought my mother was reading all those books. She thought they were 'way over my head' and perhaps they were, but I was always eager for more, and she became very helpful to me in picking out good ones. Reading and music were the two main forms of entertainment in those days. There was, of course, no radio or television. We went to bed early, to save the lamps.

Nights in Rugby were pitch-dark and the stars were magnificent. In 1910 my parents got us children up and took us outside to see Halley's comet. Nights in Rugby were filled with the sounds of whippoorwills, owls, crickets, and hound dogs.

One Sunday evening in late October 1911 the world I had known came to an end. We were sitting at the dining table eating our supper when we thought we heard the hired girl coming in at the back, after her weekly visit to her home. But after a few minutes we realized the house was on fire. I was sent to tell the neighbors who brought buckets
but there was no stopping the blaze. The house burned to the ground but not before it was possible to save some of the furnishings, including Grandmother's piano and my mother's big treadle sewing machine. We children myself 11, Bessie 9, Harry almost 7, Edith almost 5, and Bob 1½ were sent to the far end of the yard where we watched our home burn. Bessie and I lost our most treasured possessions! two big, beautiful dolls, by far the best we ever had. It was said that the fire was caused by a defective flue from the cook stove.

Neighbours, Nellie and Charles Brooks, who were about to leave for Florida for the winter immediately took us all into their house 'Uffington House' and it was there that my sister, Christine, was born just after midnight on Christmas Day 1911. She was born in the drawing room, a large room with window seats at each end. She was probably delivered by the woman doctor who lived in Rugby, Dr. Nellie Skink although many babies in the area were delivered by midwives.

In March the Brookses, returning to Rugby persuaded my father to move to Palma Sola, Florida to start over there. Later that month we made the move. It must have been a harrowing trip for my mother, with six children, the youngest not three months old and all the family's possessions, including our little dog, Trixie. We first had to travel by wagon to the town of Elgin 5 miles away to get the train. Then there was the train trip that must have taken at least a day and a night, in coach seats. Diapers would have been a major problem at that time, long before disposables.

In Palma Sola we again lived temporarily in the Brooks' house there until a 'home' of our own could be built.Palma Solawas a very small town surrounded by citrus groves. My father owned 10 acres and he planted every sort of fruit and vegetable. There were rows of celery irrigated by ditches and there was one row of banana trees. A passing photographer photographed them, and the picture was made into a postcard entitled 'Gilliats Banana Plantation'. My father also worked for Mr Brooks and another man who owned a fruit grove and packinghouse. Steamboats on the Manatee River stopped every day to pick up boxes of fruit at the dock. There were two boats the Manatee and the Poconokut.

To say that I detested Florida would be putting it mildly. I missed the cool mountains of Tennessee, and I hated the humid heat of Florida, and the flies and mosquitoes that occupied the screenless house. There were many snakes around. My little sister, Edith, ran right over one, one day, and a snake killed our little dog, Trixie. The less said about Florida the better. Still, I was dismayed when, in 1916, we had to move again before the end of my last year in school. By then I had a number of close girl friends that I didn't want to leave, some of whom I still keep in touch with after all these years. (We never saw each other except at the one-room school, but still our friendship has endured). We left Florida in May, selling or giving away all our furniture. A distant relative in Nashville, whom we called 'Uncle Will Hull', (the father of Cordell Hull, who was Secretary of State from 1933-1944) had offered my father a job as overseer on a large farm there.

This time seven children made the trip, my little sister, Margaret, being about I½ years old by then. When we got to Nashville my father found that there was no school close enough to the farm, so that plan fell through. While in Nashville, we stayed at the home of a childless couple named Tompkins (no relation.) They decided to move to Dayton, Ohio, and persuaded my father to move there too.

Again we lived with this same couple in Bellmont, a suburb of Dayton. At first my father worked for the National Cash Register Company. Later he got a job with the B & 0 Railroad, and we rented a house in another suburb called Beavertown. Eventually a number of my mother's sisters and her brother, Ed, moved to Dayton too.

My parents were unable to send me to high school so I got a job "baby sitting" an eight year old boy who lived across the street from us in Bellmont. I gave half of my earnings to my mother and saved the other half to pay for a business course which was about, a tremendous sum to me. I also did ironing for another family. [Ed. notes although she was too modest to mention it, several of Ellen's sisters have reported that she spent a considerable portion of her small earnings to buy nice school clothes for her younger sisters.] Finally I had enough money to take the business course and pay for my car fare - 5 cents each way. I took shorthand and typing and then got an office job in Dayton. That was in 1918.

In March of 1919, I met a young Civil Engineer who was in Dayton working on the "Miami Conservancy," a flood-control project on the Miami River following a serious flood. His name was Merritt Smith. He came from Rhode Island, and was a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He came to see me on the "traction" (trolley) since he had no car. There wasn't much to do or see in Beavertown. We went for walks or to the movies. Merritt, an only child enjoyed my big family. By now there were eight of us children. My sister Eva had arrived in 1916, and on August 9 191~ my baby brother, James Eugene, was born, making 9.

Later that year we moved to a house in Dayton, off of North Webster Street, close to the railroad and the Little Miami River. We called that place
'the big yellow house'. Like the other houses we had occupied in Ohio this one had electricity, but no running water (which we had had in Bellmont.) There was a pump in the kitchen and a big wood-burning cookstove. When my mother made pancakes she simply cleaned the top of the stove and poured the batter onto it. My father, who had several hunting dogs, used to say "The dogs get the first ones, let the children wait" It must have taken a lot of pancakes to feed that hungry brood.

Little Eugene was always a sickly baby. In 1919 Merritt gave me money so that my mother could go back to Tennessee to visit her parents, but the baby was too sick for her to go. She never did make that trip until Merritt and I took her and my youngest sister, Dorothy, in 1931 or '32, but by then both of her parents had died.

Merritt's job took him to Chicago in May 1919 but he came back to visit often. On September 20 1920 Merritt and I were married in the Methodist Chapel, with just the family present. Merritt had a taxi take my mother and me and the youngest children to the church - my very first taxi ride, the others walked. He also gave me a bouquet. Afterward we went right from the church to the railroad station. My sister, Bessie has said she was heartbroken when we left, because she thought she would never see me again. I never did see my baby brother again.
He died two days after the wedding, but I was not notified until after the honeymoon.

Merrit and I spent our first night in Cleveland at the Hotel Cleveland. Later we had a boat trip down the Hudson River aboard the Robert Fulton. On the way a yacht ran into our boat, but without any injuries. The boat trip took us to Providence Rhode Island, an overnight trip. There we were met by Merritt's father who drove us to their home in North Scituate, R.I. It was the first time I had met his parents.

Merritt's father, Dr. Harry Winfield Smith, was a typical old-fashioned country doctor, who had his office in part of their large house. For many years he visited his patients in either a buggy or a sleigh, depending on the weather. Even after he got a car he sometimes continued to use the sleigh in the winter. Their house was a fine, comfortable home with electricity, plumbing, and central heating. Like so many New England homes, the house was attached to the other buildings out back. For years a windmill in the yard pumped the water.

The day after we arrived in North Scituate Merritt's parents took us to Boston and helped us to find a furnished apartment at 25 Linwood Avenue Arlington Mass. We had three rooms on the second floor. Merritt was teaching at M.I.T. at that time. In the summer of 1921 he took a job with the Michigan Department of Highways and we moved out to Eagle Lake, Michigan, just for the summer. We had a little summer cottage by the lake. We traveled by train, not having a car. On the way we stopped in Dayton - my first visit back to my family since our wedding. From then on I managed to get home about once a year. In September we returned to Boston and Merritt taught at M.I.T. again. His father helped us get our first car. In 1922 my youngest sister, Dorothy was born.

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