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Esther Miller, 92, a resident at Daviess County Nursing & Rehab at Gallatin, was born on Jan. 14, 1917. She was born and raised in Breckenridge and Hamilton. She came from a family of 10. There were six boys and four girls. She was number five.
As a child, she went to Bear Branch school outside of Hamilton. There were seven children from her family in school at one time. She walked or rode horses for a mile and a half to school.
Esther said she doesn’t remember any fads or fashions from those days. "We were lucky if we had two or three dresses," she said. "We washed on the washboard."
There weren’t any toys. She remembers one Christmas having one wagon to divide between six or seven smaller children. The children would play down in the woods. They would ride horses with no bridle or saddle. They’d swim in the creek with no swimsuit, just their overalls.
Esther only went to tenth grade in high school. She and her brother Lloyd were in the same grade. She decided to get married and have a family and let her brother go ahead and graduate. She left school at 16 to be out on her own. Esther remembers during the Depression when she worked for $3 per week. She did housework and cooked.
"Nowadays, it’s all boughten," she said. "Back then we made it all ourselves."
She married Stanley Miller. They had a dry cleaning business in Iowa for six years. Esther worked the presses (there was no air conditioning in those days!) and waited on the counter.
They sold out and went to California where Stanley was a marine engineer. She lived in California from 1948 to 1981.
Esther always loved to help people. There were some elderly women who were her neighbors in California that she helped with laundry and washing windows and taking them to the doctor and never charged a dime.
Esther said some of the best years of her life were after her husband retired. They enjoyed being with each other. He’d been gone at sea most of their married life.
When going to school, she wanted to be a nurse. She was not too serious about it, but it was in her mind. Though she never received a nursing degree, she was a nurse of sorts all of her life. Her husband was on hospice and she took care of him at home.
She came back to Missouri after 28 years. She had three sisters in the area and she helped them garden and can. She loved to be outside.
Her sister, Helen, is the only one left besides her from her family. Helen is married to Junior Dixon. Esther’s nephew is Danny Dixon, who owns Breadeaux Pizza in Gallatin.
Esther thinks the economy is making it hard right now for teenagers. Everything is expensive and prices are going up. "I don’t know how people feed their families," she said.
She’s been at the nursing home for three months and she likes it very much. The staff keep her involved in everything. They had a baby contest recently and she was a judge.
"I know I’m here to stay and it’s a pretty good place to live," she said.