Crest of Clan MacIvor

Chapter X

Title

I will now tell of Malcolm's family. His widow died a few years after his decease, and Flora married a man by the name of Smith and Jessie, a man by the name of Notman, both doing business in Chicago. Annie, who had been a kindergarten teacher, went into the office of the Times-Star, a newspaper where she served faithfully for nearly twenty years. Then she met Professor Tyner, a public lecturer, newspaper man and writer of books. For several years he was the editor of the Dayton Journal.

In the year 1914, they started for the old country on a tour but before they reached England, she had declared war on Germany. They decided to stay in London for a time, later going to Edinburgh, Scotland and getting tired of Scotland, they came back to London where he got on one of the London papers, The Times I think. Leaving there they went to Paris, France, where he edited the European edition of the New York Herald. In 1920 they came back to their own country, the United States, where we will leave them for the present.

Flora has two sons, Donald and Judson. Donald is attending Cincinnati University and Judson is a cadet at West Point, New York. If I am not mistaken, both boys were in uniform during the late world war. Jessie has one son, Lucien MacIvor Ottman.

In the year 1869, my brother Kenneth, whom we called "Keny," took gold fever and left home for California and Nevada, leaving "the baby", about 17 years old at that time, to run the farm with hired men, which event changed the whole future course of my life, but it may have been for the best, as my brother Angus wanted my father to give me a good business education and I was to go west with them, but Keny going away changed all this and I had to stick to the farm and here I am still and expect I will be to the end.

Keny took to mining and prospecting with varying success for five years when, through exposure and working in copper mines, it settled on his lungs. After taking various treatments and not improving any, he came home disappointed and broken down in health, only a shadow of his former self. He was a splendid looking man, six feet tall, straight as an arrow, honourable and upright, temperate in all things. Like his elder brother Angus, he did not know the taste of either liquor or tobacco. I never heard a vulgar or a profane word out of his mouth. Though everything that kind friends could do for him, was done, he lingered a few months and then passed to that world of spirits, about two years after Dan's death and about the same age, 28 years.

When he came home from Gold Hill, Nevada, he brought his little nephew, Malcolm David Logan, Maggie's boy, with him. He was only five years old then and he stayed with us until he was ten. He went back with Christy and her husband when they returned from their visit in the year 1887. Mack, as we called the boy, was a fine violin player. We have lost sight of him for some years.

During the time my brothers were doing business in Cincinnati, they also had a store down in Alabama. I don't know what line of business they carried on there, but anyway, at the close of the war, times were bad, as formerly the whites owned the land and the slaves worked it, but now the slaves had got their liberty and the whites would not work, so in many cases the land was sold. One of these plantations was put up for sale by auction and the agent who ran the store for them put a bid on it and it was knocked down to him.

Angus, without consulting a lawyer, thought he would be held responsible for his agent's action, and took the plantation, mules, all farming machinery, etc. They put half of it in corn, and the rest in cotton, with crops turning out failures that year. There were three or four hundred acres in the plantation and this loss on top of their other troubles was the cause of their financial troubles which I told you about before.

He also took, about the same time, a carload of butter, eggs, cheese, etc., down south and sold it, contrary to the opinion of everybody, that the southerners would kill him, but he returned o.k.

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