"Mother(Ella Eunice Savage Wiley) was the second of a large family. The eldest was Aunt Hat, Harriet her name was. Mother, Uncle George, Uncle Andrew, Aunt Ettie and Aunt Nelessia. There was another little boy that never lived to manhood. Mother's father came from Canada as a young man, married and settled in Chester. George Savage his name was. He married and by Civil War days had a family of boys to go. There was Uncle Ed and another that did not come back. He lost his first wife and later married my grandmother(Julia Glidden Savage) who was twenty years younger. I do not remember Grandmother Savage, I must have been about four when she died.

It was a sunny morning and we were on the lawn in front of the home in East Eddington. It was nearly time for the rural carrier to leave the mail in the boxes in front of the house. Dad(John Wiley) was standing there in front of a huge sugar maple tree waiting and mother came out, never noticing me, and began to tell Dad that something terrible was going to happen for she had dreamed of horses - of black horses. "There's going to be a funeral" she said. I would never have remembered it if she hadn't started to cry and just then the mail man came. He had a telegram that he had brought from Hoden. When they opened it mother cried harder than ever for her mother had been killed the day before by a runaway horse tipping the buggy she was riding in and breaking her neck. Now there was bustle and confusion and mother made ready to drive Old Fanny, a dependable pot bellied old mare, to Lincoln some sixty miles away up the Penobscott River. This day was hurried, sad, and to be remembered."