A Brief Account of Hannah's family history precedes the paragraphs that tell her memories of early childhood.  She uses as her title, 'Early Years and Late Reflections.'   Note by Genevieve Towsley.

    "Three brothers named Ditzler came from Germany to America and settled in Lancaster county in Pennsylvania.  They were Thomas, Michael, and John.  John was my grandfather.  His wife's name was Schuman, and their oldest son was Johnathan, my father, who was born in 1813.

    "Grandfather had a land grant of the War of 1812 which was given to my father who got land in Blackberry, Ill. Later traded for Iowa land, then traded for a lot in Naperville- northeast corner lot on Washington and Franklin.  there he built a house in 1873 and had tenants.  This was finally sold to Mrs. Barbara Egermann. (The house was razed several years ago.)

    "My mother was Esther Alspach (later spelled Alspaugh), born near Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1814.  My parents were married in Orwigsburg in 1834.  In 1836 they traveled in a little one-horse wagon to Ohio and lived in Greentown until 1844.  Sister Elizabeth (Libbie) and brother Eli were born there.

    "In the fall of 1844 they came by way of the lakes to Chicago, where they landed on the sand of Lake Michigan.  Later my father and uncle John Alspaugh walked to Naperville where father settled, and not long after, built a house on the northeast corner of Eagle and Van Buren (the home which in recent years belonged to the late Eva Haman).

    "Sister Susan was born in a home we rented in 1845, and I was born in our own home on Eagle street February 23, 1848- the house where I lived till 1914, 66 years. (She had remained a spinster until middle life, but in 1890 she married her cousin, John Alspaugh, a widower with three children.)

    "Every evening after supper, father would take Sue and I in his lap and sitting in the old Boston rocker, he would sing Bye-o-Bye baby and put us to sleep.  As the kitchen door was open, we could see the reflection in the mirror of mother doing up the supper dishes.  We used to sleep in a trundle bed in mother's room.  In daytime it was moved under her bed. (The Ditzlers usually had a border or two, and often had relatives visiting, so space was at a premium.)

    "On Christmas we usually got candy, nuts, raisins, and oranges.  One time we got tippets (scarfs) to wear around the neck.  These were the first gifts I remember.  They were hid in mother's bureau drawer.  I told Sue I didn't believe in Santa Claus.  She asked why, and I said, 'Because I saw our tippets in mother's drawer...'

    "Mother said I walked when I was nine months old.  Eli used to hold a stick and I would take hold of it.  He was always my help.  Sue and I used to wear linsy-woolsey dresses of plaid, and quilted bonnets- green or purple with lining of pink silk- that my mother made and were worn by all then...Mother used to buy carded wool and spin it into yarn on her wheel.  We children often worked the treadle to rest her foot, using our hands.  She knit stockings for other people.  Made a lot for the Houser family- blue and white striped ones, and red and white...

    "Mother and I wore our green, quilted mantels- long capes that were thick and warm- when she and father and I rode with Mr. Manbeck to Chicago.  He used to do teaming to Chicago, and we rode with him in the wagon over the Plank road.  At Bulls Head tavern, at the corner of Madison street and Ogden avenue, we saw Indians on a long porch, wrapped in their blankets...

    "North of our house was an open field.  Naper's fields, we called it, where we used to pick wild strawberries and sorrel.  There was lots of sorrel in the Academy (Naper School) yard, too.  We used to gather it and mother made pies of it.  there was a 'froggery' north of Benton where we children used to play and jump from one hill to another...

    "Daniel Lehman taught school down near the brook on Jefferson avenue. (Where would that be?).  She attended there, and I went with her one day.  Lydia Stricker took her little sister, too.  There was an eclipse of the sun, and we were afraid, associating it with Bible records (of the world coming to the end?). I think I can still hear the gurgling of the brook under the wooden floor...
 
     "In early years my sister Libbie was a nurse girl at Sleights, who lived on the hill on the east side of town.  (It early became a tradition for the daughters of families of limited income to work for households of more affluence.).  She had charge of Ida Sleight, and on Saturdays mother would dress Sue and me clean and we would go and play with Ida.  She was then the only child, and had lots of playthings- dishes and dolls, etc.  Her mother would give us lunch, and we used Ida's toy dishes.  Oh, how we enjoyed those hours!  Ida grew to be a sweet woman like her mother.  She married Will Wright, and I often met them in later days at soldiers' reunions...

    "The Evangelical church was only a few doors from our house (now St. John's United Church of Christ on W. Van Buren).  As the Sunday school way in the afternoon, some folks stayed, and we often had lots of company to dinner.  My parents fed many people, and I wonder how mother could do it all, for she was subject to severe headaches.  Father was treasurer and librarian in Sunday school, and mother a teacher.  In 1858 the church was sold to the Lutheran congregation, which had been meeting in the Academy, and the Evangelicals built a new brick church (on the site of the present Community United Methodist Church).

    "A neighbor, Mrs. Strouse, died in the summer of 1854.  It was customary to give a dinner for the relatives.  It was hot;  the odor was bad; and the flies were plenty.  Mother was there to help with the dinner, and I think it must have been there where she took the (typhoid) fever which nearly cost her life...She got sick, and for three months hung between life and death.  Mrs. Mary Dissinger kept house for us.  (Sister Libbie had married and gone to California).

    "Sue also had the typhoid fever, and lay on the trundle bed in the parlor.  I used to chase the flies from her.  Many died from typhoid fever that summer.  Mother was so low that we expected her to die.  In that case I would go to live with Aunt Hannah in Chicago, and Sue was to got to Aunt Tena Miller.  But, thank God, mother recovered and lived to be nearly 89 years old..."

    Living in the mainstream of Naperville's activities in the middle of the 19th century, Hannah Ditzler was a witness to many events of significant historical value.  Her contemporaries had the same opportunity; but to Hannah we are indebted for recording her impressions of them.  Her memories of school, playmates, and family enable us to appreciate the uncomplicated but often difficult way of life that prevailed in the modest homes of our villagers.

    In 1853, Patrick Tole was murdered north of "Warren station" (Warrenville) while being robbed by Patrick Doyle.  The murderer was arrested and brought to Naperville, then the county seat, for trial.  His guilt was established, and he was sentenced to be hanged.  Not until the next Spring was he actually put to death.  Hannah, a child of six, was among the scores of witnesses to this, our county's only hanging!

    "Our neighbor, Mr. Meyers, had a little wagon and one horse.  He took his children and Sue and me to the scene.  It was out on Chicago avenue at the foot of the hill- now a gravel pit (Ritzert's).  I remember how we rode over the rocky road and say the hillside covered with people, then saw the white robed figure with a white cap jerked up.  Oh, I never saw such a sight and never want to!

    "We had stopped outside the field and stayed in the wagon.  When we came home, we found cousins Mary and Sarah Miller here for Blackberry (?).  Sarah was dressed in white, and wore one of mother's lovely red roses.  She looked so handsome it made me forget the horror of the scene..."

    1854 was the year, too, when Hannah's sister Libbie, only 18, was married, and went in a "prairie schooner" with her young husband to California.  Hannah tells the circumstances, and then pasted into her scrap book her sister Libbie's detailed recollections of the six-month ordeal.   Read  Libbie's Story.