The story of the life of Jennie Lee Hawkins Holmes came about as a result of my interest in Arizona history in general and my family history in particular. My grandmother, Jennie Lee, was born in the Arizona Territory in February 1891. She passed on parts of the family history by telling the stories of her early life to her children and grandchildren. She also kept a personal journal, excerpts from which are to be found throughout this book. To preserve these stories for future generations, my daughter Deborah and I began working with Grandma Jennie by putting her oral history on tapes. Little did we know what a big job it would turn out to be. One year from the day we started, Grandma died (on my birthday January 27, 1978), leaving us to continue to put the pieces together as best we could. We started by interviewing family members then progressed to doing research in libraries, courthouses, archives, historical societies, and museums. Ultimately, all this research required some major decisions about what to include and what to leave out from all the interesting information we had gathered. I published the first version in 1987 after moving to Lake Montezuma in the Verde Valley. During the ensuing 30 years, I have lived here, I have come across many more stories about our family and their history. The revised version includes some of the other information I and other family members have discovered.In keeping with our original idea of recording some interesting and informative facts about Grandma Jennie's life, this book is an attempt to give the reader a small glimpse into the life of a pioneer during the early days of Arizona. It is not intended to be a complete history, but all the information and anecdotes recorded are as factual as we were able to determine.My story as a pioneer began in 1875 with a long, difficult journey from Missouri. My grandparents, William Henry, Sr. and Harriet Hawkins, along with ten of their thirteen children, traveled in a wagon train to the newly-settled Verde Valley in the Arizona Territory. My parents, William Henry, Jr., and Alice Smith Hawkins, followed them three years later with one-year-old Harriet (Hattie). They had nine more children while living in the Verde Valley, and I was born on February 26, 1891, the seventh of these ten children. In 1900 my mother died and my father took my two younger brothers Bill and Alvin, and sister Mary Alice and me to live with our married sister Hattie, in Phoenix. We eventually moved to Buckeye in 1904.I married John Robert Holmes two years later, and we homesteaded in the vicinity of Buckeye and Cashion until we moved to Phoenix in 1923 when Robert was no longer able to do the heavy work on the ranch. Our five children grew up and finished their schooling in Phoenix. Robert and I had been married for 54 years when he died on November 11, 1962, shortly before his 82nd birthday.This book is the true story of my life as told to my granddaughter, Wyona Holmes Jaffe.