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"One day a man came
into Mr. Hardin's store with a tiny little Indian girl made homeless by Indian
war of the Digger Root Tribe. The man begged Mr. Hardin to take the child. At
first he refused, but she seemed so forlorn he took her, and in no time little
Kate, as they called her, had endeared herself to the whole family with whom
she lived for 85 years. Since they did not know her age, they gave her an age
and gave the same birthday as Mrs. Hardin. By the time Ethel Hardin was born,
Indian Kate was old enough to take charge of her. Mrs. Hardin trained Kate
well, taught her the secrets of southern cooking she had learned in Tennessee.
Kate helped Mrs. Hardin train the young foreign girls would bring from off the
wharf in San Francisco. By the time they were trained, they got married and
left, but not Indian Kate. There were several of those faithful Indian servants
in old Santa Rosa familes. And as the colored servants in the old south took
the family name, so did these Indian girls... Mrs. Hardin used to take Kate to
San Francisco to help with the children during their stay in a hotel, and she
learned to be an excellent hair dresser from watching San Francisco hair
dressers work with Mrs. Hardin. Once Mrs. Hardin took the children and Kate
around the Horn to New York, and by train to Missouri to visit for six
months." |
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