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1915 at the South Family, where he had apparently gone to be taken care of. The West Family then
immediately closed and Harriet moved to the Church Family. Hugo Stroebel had been working at the
West Family since at least 1910 and he, of course, went to the South Family where he continued until
they closed in 1938. Incidentally, they cut in half the house he had lived in atthe West Family and
spent a couple of weeks in May moving one-half to the South Family for him to live in.

On April 29th, 1916, Anna Goepper records that "Essie Relyea, a young woman at the
North Family, 19 years of age, has leftto live with her sister." There had been three Relyea sisters
with the North Family at one time and a nice portraitof them exists. Anna wonders what they are
going to do at the North Family because they have so many aged and badly afflicted. "Esther Scott
is very near death with cancer of the breast (she died May 30th, a month later), IsabelleWhite is
quite feeble, Lavinia Dutcher very frail, Elnora DeGraw an invalid now for over three years (she died
2 Juned), Jennie Wells doctors all the time, and Hattie Coburn is almost an idiot and has to be looked
after all the time." EstherScott had always looked after Hattie and was no longer able to, so they
were talking of placing Hattie in an institutionfor the feeble-minded, but this wasn't done until after
the North Family closed and after she had lived at the South Family for several years.

Then, on Sunday, May 21st, Hamilton DeGraw appeared at meeting with a black eye and
bruised face and itturned out he had had a fight with the cousin of Elmer Kellam, the North Family
foreman. The North Family had intended to fire the man on Saturday night and Elmer told his cousin
o give Hamilton "a good thrashing" before he left. (Hamilton was 63 and, according to the 1915
Census, the foreman Elmer was 22 and his cousin about 20.) Hamilton had knocked the fellow down
and bloodied his nose but Anna Goepper says "he didn't get half enough is the trouble ... a furious
mess up there."

So itis no surprise when Anna records a year later in May 1917 that Elder Josiah and Eldress
Anna Case went to New Lebanon to see the Ministry about the "broken down and bankrupt condition
the foreman, Elmer Kellam, left them in at the North Family. Stole and broke everything he could lay
his hands on." And a week later the Ministry came by car from Hancock "to see about giving financial
aid to the North Family."

But in July 1917, Eldress Anna Case was also asked by the head ministry to go to Enfield,
Conn., and it turned out thather visit was about the closing of the Shaker community there. This
move took place that fall and brought Eldress Caroline Tate and her uncle Harry Richmond, and Sister
Lucy Bowers to the South Family, and Maria Lyman, aged 84, to the North Family. Considering the
terrible condition the North Family was in, one wonders why another aged person was sent there*
Maybe there was some personal connection -- we shall probably never know. Maria died there a
year later.

Hamilton DeGraw apparently had a soft spot in his heart forthe South Family members
because Anna Goepper notes at various times over the next few years this arrival with something from
his garden - a bushel of spinach, the firstradishes in the spring, asparagus, a bushel of melons.
Eldress Anna Case also gave considerable moral support to Ella Winship in her chore of managing the
North Family and E Ma and Jennie Wells would bring the young girls to the South Family for special
holiday entertainments. During World War 1, when civilians were to have no more white bread but
had to use "Liberty flour," Jennie Wells came to the South Family to find out how Anna Goepper
made her bread because the people at the North Family couldn't eat Jennie's bread at all. Anna says
she was mixing Libertyflour with part rolled oats, part barley flourand part graham flour and she
comments "Everybody says my bread is A No. 1, they can eat it just as wellas white."