On Eva’s fifteenth birthday, her mother told those nursing her to “tell the girls to come here,” she wanted to talk to them. “She told us to be good,” Grandma told me.

“I never thought about her dying, you know, then, we thought she was just sick.” Mary Jane died that February 17th in 1906 after asking Eva to take good care of her younger brothers, Paul, Harley and Miller.

She did as her mother asked…she was a good wife, mother and Christian…and throughout the rest of her life she shared a special bond with her three younger brothers.

In 1912, Eva married “the boy down the street,” in this case a handsome Kings Ferry youth six years her senior, “Arch”…for Archibald…Connors.

A brief out-of-state job for Arch in New Jersey with a railroad affiliate, accounts for why their son, Woodrow, is the only native of Elizabeth, New Jersey…with a Southern accent. After they returned to Jacksonville in 1914, they moved to Woodstock Park where they raised seven children: Woodrow, Julia, Gerald (“Gerry”), Lucille, Mary Elizabeth, Florence and Archie.