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^[[HOH Smith - 1905]] [[underlined]] ^[[Dup]] 
^[[1]]
[[/underlined]] 
^[[almost 4 decade ago]]

I was born in Columbus , Georgia some seventy years ago.  I have lovely memories of a Victorian typeof house, which my father had built, situated in a section of the city called Rose Hill.  It was rightly named because roses bloomed there almost the year round.  Still fresh in my memory are the beautiful flower garden[[strikethrough]]s[[/strikethrough]] that we had.  There were two unusual circular flower beds, so deeply preserved in my subconscious, which find expression in my paintings.^[[today]]

My childhood in Columbus, where I attended the grade schools, was very pleasant.  My mother and aunts were teachers and were graduates of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.  I can remember their participation in Cultural clubs, their studing Latin, History, and the Classics.  A white professor from Atlanta came to our home [[overwrite]] or [[/overwrite]] ^[[about]] twice a month to instruct them. A fiend of theirs went to Washington and took lessons in painting on velvet.  Upon her return to Columbus, she opened a class in that type of painting. I enjoyed the club's meeting at my house, for their tubes of oil paints and their beautiful colors fascinated me.  I was given music lessons and my mother played the violin. ^[[& Aunts played different instruments]]

My three sisters and I spent the summers on our grandfather's plantation, about 10 miles across the Chattahoochee Riverin Alabama.  He was an excellent veterinarian and all his grandchildren loved him.  ^[[he had a very youthful spirit]]  My counsin Clyde McDuffie ^[[a Wahingtonian]] who was head of the foreign language department in the public school system here for many years found during his youth to visit his grandparents lovely plantation was the most enjoyable experience in his life.

When I finished grade school in Columbus, there was no^[[w]]where that I could continue my education, so my parents decided to move the family to ^[[Wash]]ington.  At least Washington's libraries were open to Negroes, whereas [[fold in paper]] Negroes from its only library.