Allen Bixby, now state commander of the American Legion is the grandson of Amasa, the brother who accompanied my father in the first trip across the isthmus. It is this sort of bodily transplanting of young stock that has left so many of the New England counties bereft of former names, but has built up in new communities many of the customs and traditions of the older civilization. Not only did my father’s immediate family come to this state but also many of his friends and cousins. I am told that at the presidential election in 1860 all the men in Paso Robles who voted for Lincoln came from Somerset county, Maine. Because this migration is typical and because many of these cousins made names for themselves beyond the limits of the family, I am going to mention a few of them. Among them was, for instance, Dr. Mary Edmands, who was an early physician in San Francisco in the days when it took grit as well as brains for a woman to gain a medical education. She succeeded as a mother as well as a professional woman, her sons and daughter at present standing high in their respective callings. Nathan Blanchard of Santa Paula was a son of still another Weston sister. He, after many hardships and almost unbelievable patience, succeeded in making a success of lemon culture in Southern California, and worked out the fundamental principle of curing the fruit that is now in vogue wherever lemons are grown for market. Another name widely known is that of Mrs. Frank Gibson, the daughter of another cousin. She has been a leader among women for many years, and member of the State Board of Immigration. Her son, Hugh Gibson, is at present United States Minister to Switzerland. These are but a few of the several hundred from this one Maine family who are scattered up and down this western land. CHAPTER II THE VERY LITTLE GIRL I was born, as I have said, on a sheep ranch in the central part of California during its pastoral period, but it is doubtless true that the environment and influences about me during the first few months of my life were very little different from what they would have been had my Maine mother not left her New England home about a year before my birth. But as the months passed and the circle of my experience widened, I was more and more affected by the conditions of my own time and place.