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 office 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 11 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 -1 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 Kate MacLean Emery 25