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Note: en, and it is not clear why, as both married. They gave everything in their apartment to my father when they went into nursing homes, and my father and his nephew, who had survived my father's brother, were their heirs. They raised Julia Smith, Willard T Smith's daughter. My father writes that they lived in Chicago for a time. She and her husband died within two years of each other, both in nursing homes, the latter of them when I was nine or ten, in 1965 or 1966. I met them in their little Philadelphia apartment when I was around six. The cemtery listed her as age 89 at death, adn the 1880 census listed her as five years old. My father wrote taht "On the various visits and trips by car I usually went along. I might not remember any of the conversatons, but the flow of dialogue was always around me like the air we breathe. My impression is that Uncle James always read the daily paper from cover to cover, a rather amazing accomplishment. Aunt Maymbe had the keenest mind among us, and a kindly spirit. Her voice was quite distinct in tone, an interesting voice, different in a pleasing way. She could have told me volumes of family history, if I had had the sense to take an interest back then. Once in a while she would speak of her father or mother, something the others seldom did. And I understand that it was she who took her father for walks in his last years. I don't recall any critical remarks in these family get-togethers. If anyone was jealous of the financial success of Uncle Frank and Aunt Mayme, it went over my young head." Mayme appears to have liked to look nice but was not too concerned about her looks. I got a single nice dress from all of the clothes she owned, when she died. I also got her plain long maroon bathrobe, and her short sky blue bed jacket. I also got her single piece of nice jewelry, a brooch, that my family inherited from her, and the contents of her makeup case that I was given to play with. She had three little class cases, and if anything was in them at all, it was plain pressed powder. She had also had an eyebrow pencil or two. A cousin says she thought Mayme looked fine; she didn't wear much makeup, and neither does my informant. The cousin, a wife of one of Willard Smith's sons told me that Aunt Mayme was a very pleasant and nice person, smart as a whip, would tell you exactly what she thought, dressed plainly but nicely (like her mother, to judge from the family photo), with only a little plain makeup - and she wore nice hats, which she seemed to continually be giving away to my informant. A family photo taken soon after the family moved to Philadelphia has Mayme dressed in a jumper, with her hair pulled straight back, looking as though she'd been going out to feed the chickens on the farm. Apparently at that time and for some time thereafter slim line white dresses were in fashion . All of the Smith women owned and wore them, including Mayme. In one photo she even has a parasol. Mayme must have been short. I was nine or ten when I inherited her bathrobe and bed jacket, and they fit me perfectly. So did her dress, as I remember. She must have been short and skinny, as she appears in the photo. When I met her when I was a small child, and her husband, both were small, unsteady very elderly people tottering around and complaining about falling alot. They were scared by their failing health, and my father, having heard such a report, had gone to check on them. Their little apartment in a large apartment building in Philadelphia was nice for the time when they decorated it but rather plainly decorated in dark heavy wood furniture, light beige (walls, rugs, neary everthing) except for some red-toned oriental rugs, brightened with some sky blue and maroon here and there. It was not an unpleasant color scheme, but it was formal and dull. The furniture was in style old fashioned and stiff. There were heavy dark oak twin beds with old fashioned big rounded headboards and footboards, another twin bed that was a little more modern and probably a spare, large heavy dark tables, wardrobes, and that sort of thing. There was a tall back, stiff, sky blue chair that my father put in the lounge church parish house, and it fit right in there. Mayme did own a few nice things, in her favorite maroon, sky blue and beige or offwhite color scheme. My sister has her extremely nice china serving platter and uses it for Christmas and Thanksgiving dinner.
Note: They had no children. Neither of the two Smith girls ever had childr
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