Abby and Laurilla Smith were welcomed by Hannah Hickok Eldred, her daughter Mary Ann Eldred Austin, and her three daughters (ages one to four): Mary Henrietta, Edith Emogene (Emma), and Maria Adelaide Austin.
(In thirteen years Abby Smith remembers the first and middle names of all three little Austin girls when she replies to a letter from Edith Emogene.)
Though quite thin and not feeling well, Abby seemed to enjoy meeting her Hickok relatives. The sisters met Hannah’s husband James Eldred, Mary Ann’s husband Henry Austin, and possibly Henry’s parents Ralph and Fanny Knapp Austin.
Abby was very impressed with James Eldred. She grew very attached to Hannah Hickok Eldred and found her “perhaps most interesting.” Laurilla (age sixty-five, the same age as Hannah Eldred) was “the most interested” in Mary Ann because she seemed like their mother with three young daughters so close in age.
Charles C.P. Eldred and his wife Effa showed Abby and Laurilla around their new home, including the room with the Lumberland Post Office.
—Abby, Laurilla, and Mary Ann, pp. 170–172.
