myFamily

Daniel James Millard

Biography by his granddaughter, Marjorie May Millard Neese

Grandpa Daniel James Millard was born in Chicago, Illinois on Nov. 6th, 1860 to Isaac Charles Guernsey Milllard and Catherine Bridgett Duffy. He stood in Lake Michigan and watched the Chicago fire burn down to lakes edge. He remembered when Pres. Lincoln's funeral train came through Chicago, they went down to the station to pay their respects to a great man. They stood with bowed heads as the train passed by them. His mother and Pres. Lincoln's wife were friends. They use to exchange letters.

Grandpa was a carpenter and learned his trade as a young boy working in a box factory. His father died when he was 6. He took care of his mother until her death. In 1882, at age 22, he moved to New Mexico for reasons of his mother's health. He helped build the Montezuma hotel in Las Vegas, New Mexico. He was Justice of the Peace there and knew many of the early outlaws and rode in posse's. He also knew Wild Bill Hickock, Buffalo Bill Cody and others. Wild Bill tried to get Grandpa to join him in his Wild West show in Europe. At this time New Mexico was still a territory of the U.S. He and my grandma were married there in Las Vegas in 1887. My father was the first white child born there in the Panoria Valley. Grandpa said the Indians came from miles around to see this white baby.

Grandpa and grandma came to California in 1895 and Sierra Madre, CA in 1912. Grandpa could keep we kids all ears and wide eyed with stories about growing up in Chicago and his early years out in the "wild and wooly west". I would give anything if he or one of the family had written these stories down, so we could have them to tell our children and grandchildren. Grandpa had a special drawer in his desk and when we saw grandpa open that we knew that we were going to get a special treat...a peppermint candy.

Grandpa played the guitar and when we were small he played and yodeled and sang for us. He loved to dance too. He was a very handsome young man and quite the "ladies man" as they said when he was young. He had curly brown hair, blue eyes, was 5'10"and had a mustache that he kept trimmed just so. He had a real Irish sense of humor.

When we girls were in our teens he and some townsmen formed a little group and played in the park in the summer and evenings in the church halls. How we loved it when he'd put his guitar down and dance with us. He danced the old fashioned waltz and you felt like you were in another world.

Grandma idolized grandpa. I never heard them speak a cross word to one another. He called her mumma and she called him papa, and whatever papa decided was all right with her, although looking back now I think grandma was the business one in the family.