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                   Letter from Chauncy Abbott about Ora Abbott -(Dated March 15, 1983, Washington)
"To know where she was coming from you have to know some spots in time and place in Ora's life.  She was born exactly in the middle of her family.  There were four older brothers (one died in infancy) and three brothers (one died at age 5) and one sister younger than she.  The oldest brother was eight years older than she and the youngest sibbing (brother) was almost 12 years
younger.  She was two years younger to the next older brother and two years older than the next younger brother.
Born Aug. 18, 1904 in Cove, Oregon (or Cave). All of the older children born in Nevada and the younger ones in Oregon.  Her early years she lived in logging sawmill oriented areas.  Part of the years in logging camps.
During one year in Workd War I she and I went to school in a box car set off beside the logging track.  Three kids from a stump ranch, up on the ridge, came down to make the five needed for a school.  There we were in the deep snows along the Looking Glass River.
A very pretty, short girl, attracitve to all.  When Teddy Roosevelt came through on his 1912 Bull Moose Campaign for President, at his La Grande, Oregon stop, from the back platform of his train car he saw Ora, golden haired, beautiful, smiling.  He called to her and papa came close with Ora on his shoulder and the great man did admire her - 8 years old.
On the irrigated, small farm, in Idaho, for three years (she was very popular) boys and men.  After Feb. 26, 1921 she married Leon J. McDonald; two chioldren, Chad and Joyce - living in Overton, Nevada.  Leon was away a lot with his brothers working on mining properties, playing for dances, doing bicycle repair.  Ora, ill, lonesome, but surrounded for the best with relatives: The Whitneys and their offshhots, Perkins, McFarlands, Syphus, Burgess, Hughes; the Abboths and their relative ties - Bunkers, Leavitts, and others.  These became her friends.  She liked the Syphus/Whitney side better.  She thought them livelier, more fun loving, more outgoing. These were her mother's people.  The Abbotts, she said were staid and serious.
Later in Los Angeles and Hollywood she would invite them all to come - and many did.  She entertained and visited and kept track of the wider family.  When she could and often, she returned to Nevada to visit people and places and relive family (ancient) memories and her own.
Then in Hollywwod, as Mrs. Ora Abbott McDonald Gilford, she often enticed her husband, Hally, to take her to Nevada and to see relatives in Idaho, Oregon and California.
Her youngest brother, Cletus Lyman Abbott, was a fastidious person.  He bought a new car and Ora persuaded him to take her to Nevada - and to Panaca.  She found where her mother was born and the old home of her great grandfather Luke Syphus.  This run down - abandoned, open with cattle using it.  But, some things had been left as worthless.  The bundle of letters all tied together,
apparently falling out of the wall where they had been hidden; love letters
These are the letters.  (Note: These letters are at the UNLV Library, in the Special Interests Department on the 4th floor, as of Jan. 1992.  They are letters written by Mary Etta Syphus to John Bunker and from John Bunker to Mary Etta Syphus before these two married in 1895.  LThe letters are dated from 1891 to 1895.)
And these old ledgers and much else but Cletus complained and would not let her put the dirty - dusty stuff in his car.  This is all she saved.  She cried as she told me of the valuable things left
there in the dust - and ruin.  Before she could get back it was all gone, burned or hauled away with the ruin of the home.  Ora died Sept. 16, 1975.  Buried Los Angeles Rose Hill Memorial Park."