Here lies Johann and his wife, Betsy, and their daughter, Catherine Anne, Bud's great-grandmother.

John died March 28, 1874 in Richmond, VA, his remains moved here.

Betsy died August 21, 1880 at 52 Clinton Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, which made her trip somewhat shorter.

And Catherine Anne died December 5, 1927, in the Russlend/Mills/Simmons' brownstone at 456 7th Street, Brooklyn, NY. (I don't know where her husband, David Russlend, is interred, but I would imagine in a Russlend family plot, somewhere.)

I can't tell you how long that house was in Bud's family, but besides Catherine, Homer "Pops" Mills died there in 1930; Bud's father, Robert Alan Simmons, died there in 1949; and lastly, at the ripe old age of eighty-four, Mother Mills died there on the 29th of June, 1951.

Olive "Ollie" Edna Mills Simmons (Grandma Ollie), nursed her father, her husband and finally her mother until their deaths. Then, alone, started the long, tedious process of preparing to sell the huge, old, four-story brownstone full of generations of memories and memorabilia—and that prompted my family's trip east in the Summer of 1952, which is when I acquired those items of Mother Mills mentioned in my book. After moving, Ollie never tired of extolling the wonderful virtues of the St. George Hotel, where she lived out her days in catered luxury—she deserved it!