2 > ‘ Kate Emery

The Emery house in Melville may be off the beaten track now but it was once in the centre of a thriving little area. Kate’s husband Pete operated a store and the post ofi‘ice across the road, and people gathered there every night to get the mail the train brought out from Charlottetown.

Kate remained in the home until her death, with her son Gordon for company. Many of her old friends were still close by: others, like Cassie MacLeod had moved a few miles away to be closer to their families or take up residence in the manors for senior citizens.

I went [to the States] in 1920. At that time you used to have to pay a head tax. You had to pay nine dollars, and then you were free to go on the train.

I wasn’t toO long in the States. I was there, I don’t know, a year or two...: I went to Pittsfield [Maine]. That’s on the way to New York, and that’s Where I met Holmes, my husband. We got married, and we were just married 1 1 months when Blanche was born. She was eight days old when he dropped dead. And then I came home here when Blanche was about three months old. I stayed home then with my mother, my father. I don’t know now where I went from there.

Then, of course, I married Pete and I moved over here to this house. And then Gordon was born. So I had Blanche and Gordon.

Family

I remember my mother used to go what they call ceilidhing. The don’t have that anymore. Ceilidh? It’s a Gaelic word. And when she’d come back home — I can see them yet: we were kids —- my father’d

by laying on the couch and my mother’d be at the kitchen. There was no w

Kate MacLean Emery 25