100 Years Ago Today

My Mother’s Grandfather Niels Moller Eilersen passed away 14 May 1904. At the time my Grandmother was 10 years old.

From Anna Hypolita (Eilersen) Hansen History

… Mother was something of a tomboy. Perhaps this was encouraged since her parents had lost a boy older and one younger than she and her father dearly wanted a son. She and her father were constant companions and she loved to help him around the farm. How she enjoyed riding the horses and helping in such ways as driving the horses in a circle while he fed the machine they pulled straw from the barn. This was a straw cutting machine which cut the straw into short pieces for the animals…

cz2.JPG cz1.jpg

… The family then had to sell Cozy Hill Farm and move to the city of Horsens because here father’s ill health (tuberculosis of the stomach, chest and throat) wouldn’t permit his taking care of the farm. However, he couldn’t leave all the horses behind so he took some of his best horses and a few pigs with them. These were cared for by a hired man outside the city limits, and the family leased an apartment in Horsens for one year. Mother and her sister Sophie went to private school during that year…

… Her father died when she was nearly nine (May 1904). This was a great sorrow to the family and a tremendous loss was undoubtedly felt by the young girl Lita who had always loved and favored her dad and known his constant love and companionship…