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From the Autobiography of Eva PearlDale Daniels Hover
1897-1994
According to her grandson, Gregory C. Boutwell, Eva Pearl Daniels Hover never won any great awards but she left behind a legacy of inspiration, faith and love for her grandchildren that never can be replaced. She always had a smile and kind word for everyone she met. She never complained about things she didn?t have but rather the things she couldn?t give. She showed no favoritism to any one grandchild but loved them all with a love only a grandmother could give.
In 1987, at the age of ninety, Eva Pearl began writing a ?dialogue, story, diary or what ever you are a mind to call it...? leaving behind wonderful stories and memories for others to share. Following are delightful excerpts from her writings.
?My father was bom in New York. Quite a difference in it then and now. In 1842 when my father was bom, New York was like the country, and they cut and hauled wood on the railroad, split shingles, farmed mostly grain. ...My father?s name was Jerome Daniels and his three brothers were Loyal, Benjamin and Alphonza. The two girls were Rosey and Emma.
My father joined the army in his late teens.... Shortly after he was released from the army he met my mother who was bom in Glyndon, MN. I think that was where she was bom. That?s where she and my father were married. ...My mother?s name was Orstella Hannah Atkins. When she and my father were married, she weighed 901bs and he weighed 2801bs. After he and mother had a family of six, four girls and two boys and I was on my way.
He (my father) had a friend who was in the army with him who had come South, his name was Henry Eggerts and kept writing to my father to come South and he was always bragging on the climate and many other things so when my daddy lost his grain crop one year and he went broke he decided to come south, so he gave away house hold goods, his stock and sold the home and loaded his family on the train and headed South. Landed in a little town called Nicholson, Mississippi, where I was bom six months later.
Eva Pearl?s mother died when she was two years old and she lived with an older sister and others until her father remarried when she was six.
?When I went back home with my daddy and stepmother, she and I didn?t get along because in the first place I resented her being there. I didn?t think she belonged in my home. She could have been good to me if I had let her, she believed in one moving the minute they were spoken to and I can remember how I?d take my own good time. So then she?s make for me and I?s run and she couldn?t catch me, round and round the house we?d go until she?d finally give up. I?d stay outside until she?d get over her mad spell. Then when my daddy would get home she?d tell him how I ran from her and say aren?t you going to punish her? and he?d say, that was just your hard luck if you can?t out ran a six year old, then she (my stepmother) would get furious. Then when he?d get me to myself he?d give me a good talking to and shame me, but it went in one ear and out the other.
?So then Emma (her oldest sister) took her for awhile or at least till I was eight or nine
years old.....The house (in Napoleon) was right close to the Pearl River, the river I was named
for. And the school was only a short distance from the house. My school teachers name was Miss Perry and she boarded with us. ...While we were still living there, by the river, an epidemic of Yellow Fever broke out in Logtown, five miles from Napoleon and a family of eight came from Logtown to get away from the Yellow Fever so the brought mattresses and bed cloths(sic) and stayed with us until danger of the disease was over.


Hover, John B 001
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