On a cold wintry morning in the year 1880, exactly one month after Christmas Day, a baby girl was born to James Whitson McDaniel and Nancy Jane Biggerstaff McDaniel. She was their fourth child, and she was named Nancy Leota. That was Mama. At this time the McDaniels were living a few miles from Burnt Chimney (which was later called Forest City) at a crossroads known as Striped Store, named so because of the small store building at the crossroads painted in stripes of red and white. This store building was also the post office, and James Whitson (Grandpa Mac) served as the postmaster. Later the McDaniels bought several hundred acres of land a few miles down the road from Striped Store and built a five-room house for the family. Grandma Mac lived here until she died. Grandpa had built this house when Mama was three years old, and it had five rooms and a hall. Every room except one small bedroom had a fireplace in it. There was even a fireplace in the kitchen. They always kept a fire going in the kitchen and in Grandma's room.

Just four years before this, October 18, 1876, several miles nearer the South Carolina line, a baby boy was born to George Sylvester Hawkins and Annie Octavia Green Hawkins. He was their first child, and they named him Plato Commodore Hawkins. Several years later, the family moved to the Providence section of Rutherford County, and it was here in a one-room school house, that Nancy (Nanny) McDaniel and Plato (P. C.) Hawkins happened to meet. Later, when Papa was a young man, he briefly taught school in the same small school where they met.

The two children started out walking to school together carrying lunch pails filled with sausage and ham biscuits and hot sweet potatoes. Soon their childhood friendship turned into romance and at 2:00 pm on December 19, 1899, with friends gathered in the parlor of James Whitson and Nancy Jane McDaniel's home, Mama and Papa were married. Grandma Mac, an expert seamstress who sewed for a lot of people, made Mama's dress. It was a beautiful shade of deep teal blue with leg-of-mutton sleeves and a tight waist with a full skirt that came down to her ankles. She was especially proud of the dress since Grandma Mac had made it, and it went perfectly with the navy blue suit that Papa so handsomely wore.

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