Daisy Ethel (Lee) Miller (1905 - 2000)

Born 12 Oct 1905 in Canoe, Escambia County, Alabama, USA

Ancestors

Wife of Ernest Beltz Miller — married 11 Jun 1923 in Canoe, Escambia County, Alabama, USA

Died 27 Feb 2000 at age 94 in Tullahoma, Coffee County, Tennessee, USA

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Carolyn Murray [send private message]

Biography

Daisy Ethel Lee Miller was an accomplished sculptor and needleworker. Her sculpted work was done both in native clay and wood and she made many fine quilts and crocheted pieces, including tablecloths and bedspreads. She is buried in Mobile Memorial Gardens, Theodore, Mobile county, Alabama.^[1]

I was born October 12, 1905. I am now 86 years old, a lot has happened in my life time and a lot of changes have been made in life styles.

You should know a little about my family before me. My father's family was of English descent. The Lees were hard working, hard drinking and hot tempered people, but honest, and kind. They were farmers. My grandfather's wife was Amanda Melvina (Viney) Bethea. They evidently came from a rather aristocratic family. My mother's father's people came from Scotland and were evidently very important people there, since there was a county and city named for them. My grandmother Peebles was part Indian and English.

I have no memory of my grandfather, William Madison Lee, and only one of my grandfather, William Henry Peebles. My father, Earnest Lee Lee, died when I was 10 years old. But I have some good memories of him. He was a very smart man. He was the first man to get stumps out of his farm land in his area. They used dynamite to blast them out. He made straight rows and planted his seed a certain distance apart. He produced more per acre on his farm. Pretty soon the other farmers were following his example.

The first home I lived in was a little 3 room house with a porch across the front. The barn was next to it with a fence dividing the front yard of the house from the barn. One day I got too near the fence playing and the horse reached over the fence and picked me up by my shoulders. Needless to say I have never forgotten it. In those days we had no screen and sometimes only wooden shutters for windows. Our water supply came from a well or pump in the yard. Once we lived where our water came from a spring. Our lights were kerosene lamps and lanterns. We used out houses (privies) for toilets. Our heat came from fireplaces and cooking was done on small stoves that used wood. Wood was plentiful in those days, and we could get all we wanted for just cutting and hauling it. My Mother's family belonged to the Baptist Church; my father's family were all Methodist. We attended both churches.

When I was about five years old we moved near a place named Muscogee, Florida. My father worked for a large farm there. At this time we lived in a small house in the woods. A creek ran near one side of our home and the deer came near often. We fed the blue birds and red birds and if we were real still they would light on our hands. When we went to visit our grandmothers, we would flag a train in the middle of a grassy land. It would stop for us, and, on our return they would stop at the same place for us to get off. We were poor in material things, but rich in family.

My father quit drinking when I was about four years of age. He would play with us. My Mother was more reserved. We moved back near Atmore, Alabama just inside the Florida line. This is where I started to school at age 8 and this is where my father started his progressive farming. Two years later he died. We moved into my grandmother Peebles home - her youngest son, Calvin Abner Peebles, unmarried lived with her, and a grandson a year younger than me, James Henry (Bud) Kizer. We stayed with grandma until after my uncle married, and had two children, then we moved out into a rented house. We continued to farm with my uncle. We all worked on the farm. My father's older brother grew an acre of cotton for my mother and gave her the money from it for several years. He was a wonderful man. He was married with five children and his mother to take care of.

My grandmother Lee was a very kind and loving person. She would always hug and kiss us. My grandma Peebles never did, but we knew she loved us.

When I was 14 years of age I went to Mobile, Alabama with my mother and worked in the cotton mill during school vacation. We sent our money to my grandmother Peebles to help with the family expense. This was some experience for me. I saw my first movie, and went to my first park - on Sundays they had free movies, rides and swimming. Everything was free. When school started I went back to my grandmother, Mamma stayed on in Mobile to work through the winter months. She came home in the spring. We moved out into a rented house. I think each year after that we moved to a different farm. We had no other way to make a living except to share crop. In other words we gave a share of our crop for the use of the land. I don't think any of the houses had over three rooms - a kitchen and two bedrooms, outdoor toilets (we called privies), no screens or electricity. I went to school in a little 2 room school house, with a privy, pump for water, and stove for heat.

We would pick up potatoes, pick beans and do farm work for other farmers for cash money, but I never felt we were poor, because other people around us lived the same way. And we did have a wonderful life in lots of ways. We had lots of fun with our neighbors and relatives. We had parties, singing and get-to-gethers for fun. All the young people would go in a group to these affairs. On Sunday nights we went to a church somewhere as a group on a big wagon with hay in it. We would ride on the hay. I only had two years of high school, because the nearest high school was too far to walk to and I would have had to ride a train back and forth every day. We just did not have the money to do that. I was one year of high school in the same little 2 room school and my second year I lived with one of my fathers cousins and went to a consolidated school. I worked for them before and after school to pay for my board. By this time the Millers had moved into our neighborhood with 9 children. They were a wonderful family. Their oldest son Sylvester was married and lived in Daphne, Alabama. The next son Carl and I dated for a while then the next to the youngest son Brasher and I dated. The third oldest son, Ernest Miller came home. He had been working in Daphne, Alabama. In a very short time we started dating, fell in love and married June 11, 1923.

In all these years people living on farms saved corn for a years supply, made their own com meal, their syrup, sweet potatoes (they were stored in a place with board made into a small box like bin on the ground, and covered with dirt and straw. The opening was insulated with straw. Pork meat was cured by smoking with oak, and hickory, and some parts salted down in barrels. Also we made our own sausage.

But when Ernest and I went to Troy, Alabama he worked for a motor company. Later he drove an oil truck allover the county. He then had an offer of living on a farm near Pensacola, Florida, and working. While there he also worked for a dairy farm. In the meantime my folks had moved to Mobile where my mother was working in an overall factory and my oldest brother was working in a cup factory, I had become pregnant so we moved to Mobile also. Ernest obtained work in the plant my brother worked in. Our first child Marjorie was born in 1924. Ernest was offered the managership of a farm near Fairhope, Alabama. In 1927 our second daughter, Ernestine was born and in 1929 our third, Hazel was born. They were beautiful little girls. By this time we bought a little place near Fairhope.

Then in 1930 the great depression hit, and people allover the U. S. were without work and standing in food lines. We were lucky to live on a farm and had plenty to eat. By this time we were without a car and had to walk or go in a wagon, on boats or street cars, but we managed and were all the stronger for it. Ernest found work in Mobile, and we moved back there. By this time Marjorie was in the sixth grade in school, Ernestine the fifth and Hazel the second. They all finished high school at Murphy High in Mobile. In 1941 Ernest went to work at Brookley Field for the government and worked there until he was 70 years old, made a real good living, and I went to work at Malbis Bakery and we bought a home near the bakery. We bought a lot in the West part of Mobile and had a nice brick home built on it. At that time there were not many homes here and it was like living in the country and a wonderful place to live." ^[2]

"Ernest and I went to visit my brothers today. When we got to Leslie's, we began to talk about our childhood, the fun we had and how we lived. We thought our grandmother Sarah Ann Elizabeth Findley Peebles was better off financially than anyone else in our small community. She lived in a five room house, and an attic room across the width of the house, besides no one else lived in a house that had more than 3 or 4 rooms. Our grandfather, William Henry Peebles, was a carpenter and farmer. He built my grandma a bookcase and a china cabinet. They were the only ones in the neighborhood. It was a community of good people, no crime except two or three of the boys did drink once in a while, but I don't remember seeing them drunk. One of my Mother's sisters, much older than my mother, had 10 children. We loved to go there because there was always a child your age to play with and her children were allowed to do things that we did not do at other homes - we went swimming, made kites and flew them, played cards. They lived in a 3 room log cabin with a rock chimney and fireplace for heat and wooden shutters for windows with a front porch across the front. They had shelves on the wall to put clothes and linens and there were 2 beds in one room and bunks built in the other kids slept on quilts on the floor. Also my uncle's old maid sister lived with them."^[3]

Sources

1. ↑ Notes of Marjorie Cletcher, FEB 2005.
2. ↑ Daisy Lee Miller, 1991
3. ↑ Daisy Lee Miller, herself, date unknown

See also:

• Social Security Death Index

• "United States Census, 1930", database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:3DVL-3T2 : accessed 16 May 2016), Daisy Miller in entry for Earnest Miller, 1930.

• "United States Census, 1940," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:V1PK-DMS : accessed 16 May 2016), Daisy E Miller in household of Ernest B Miller, Ward 10, Mobile, Mobile City, Mobile, Alabama, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 49-116, sheet 15A, family 282, NARA digital publication T627 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012), roll 65.