My Grandmother

In Memory

There's a dear little room in a dear little house

That sits on the top of a hill.

It is here that my grandmother used to sit,

And in mem'ry she's sitting there still.

It is there that she sat at her spinning wheel,

Singing a sweet, old song,

Sung to the tune of a merry brook

As it bubbled and babbled along.

And whenever I think of my grandmother,

I think of this sparkling hill,

And this little room in a tiny house

Where the flowers bloom sweet on the hill.

(published by Milancie Hill, 1929)

Milancie Leach with Granddaughter Milancie Hill

Both I and my aunt were named for Grandmother Milancie Leach, 1836-1919. 

 

She was an artist of note and taught drawing and painting Dansville Seminary, Dansville, NY.

Her grandson Scott wrote she had been the bell of central NY before she married.

"A small, wonderful, self-deprecating personality, gave up her life to look after EJ.  She was so kindly to sister and me. Milancie Leach was highly intelligent and an very avid reader and perhaps the real strength of the marriage. Grandma Hill was very short, perhaps less than five feet, and slight. She was highly intelligent, a continuous reader, and had perhaps an even keener mind that her husband, although she always kept in the background.

My chief recollection of her in those days was seeing her sitting either in the kitchen at a table by the window where she would be reading, or if not there in a near by pantry which had a huge old barrel with a square board on top, also by a window with a different light, and again reading."

She gathered plants for Ellsworth dissertations, when he was too lame and weak to do so, thus he soon gained notoriety as a botanist  

Birth: November 16, 1836 in Dansville, Livingston, NY
Death: December 28, 1919 in Chicago, Cook, IL

Father: Horace LEACH b: 2 NOV 1799 in Massachusetts
Mother: Maria b: 6 OCT 1802 in Booneville, Oneida, New York

Marriage  Ellsworth Jerome HILL b: December 01, 1833 in LeRoy, Genesee, NY

Beckoning Sea 1929