I grew up in Michigan,graduating from WMU with a degree in Art Education.
In Michigan I attended many writing workshops and was part of several writing groups. I also was a news reporter for seven years in a community south of Grand Rapids until 2004 when I moved to Colorado.
I also was a full time artist earning a living from the sale of visual art from 1977 through 1997.
Since here, I have joined two Art Organizations, two Writing groups and also the Unitarian Universalist Church.
I have chosen the venue of montage and poetry for sharing the many unique family stories, pictures, and artifacts placed in my charge by my parents.
When trying to organize information about family history a few years ago, I started with both a family tree and some biographical information. To present a general picture of different family members, I thought placing pictures, some "cliff notes" with the family information and descendency
would help others to get an idea about the lives of different ancestors, and who these people were.
Biographical Pages about people with photographs and information was the first project. There turned out to be about 100 pages, including people from different branches of my family. I didn't intend to publish the Pages, in the beginning, but just to offer it to my grandchildren. The information on each person included is very brief and incomplete. I have added to it or corrected it when I found bits and pieces. But to make what I have available here, should help anyone else involved in a similar project to add to what I have compiled. I hope what others have done will in turn be made available to other relatives.... and to me.
Upon reviewing the Pages I have previously included on this blog, it appeared this would make what I have gathered on the Bowers Family complete.
Genealogical Research can result in needing to revise a family tree. It is important to go back to actual historical records if you can find them, to be sure. My goal is to offer information that is as accurate as possible.
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My other major goal for this blog is to make the wealth of information that I have, including family stories and accounts, to be accessible to other family branches. It is a heritage held in common, and should be shared. This blog is the easiest means for me to make this material public. I do wish to be credited for my work, my time, for technical expertise in photo-enhancement and for my writing. Posting on this blog is a statement of copyright.
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Revision is not easily achieved in a blog post. I will revise the Pages containing the Family Tree, (which is easier in Pages than changing Posts.) Eventually I will replace parts of Family Biographies if revision is needed, and delete the earlier version. This means the order of posts will not correspond to the sequential order of the Biographies, and the information must be sequenced by date by the reader. To make the updates available, I will also organize posts pertaining to changes in information under the Label, “Revisions.”
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I would appreciate input from other relatives who may refer to this site about the need for revisions, and will credit that person with their contribution, and name resources for information as well.
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Why Are Personal Records Wrong?
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They aren't always wrong, but people writing family trees and writing obituaries frequently make mistakes, misremember, may purposely omit information, and sometimes purposely misrepresent certain details. Unfortunately, close relatives may even secede from your branch if you revise the party line in favor of documented truth.
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This gets worse when a person disagrees with the experiences of different members and their personal stories. Often in a family gathering two people present may have different experiences at the time, and their recollections will also differ. Sometimes the person himself or herself doesn’t want a particular fact of their own life to be told, and has a vested interest in keeping secrets.
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In the Valencourt branch of my family, a great grandmother Virginia is named differently in some other parallel family lineages. But because that grandmother lived with her son Charles in Oregon, and died in his care, I believe my mother’s records are probably correct. Until I find historic documents, such as a census, birth records, marriage records, death records and other documents, that indicate differently, I will assume the version here is accurate.
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In the Bowers Lineage there are discrepancies.
Afriend of mine, Kristina Bain, explained that “before the 1850 census, the households just listed the male head (without a birth date) and put everyone else in numerical categories (i.e. 1 male age 50-60, 1 female aged 50—60, two females age 30-40 etc…) so sorting out, the Joab Bowers family may require further inquiries at the genealogical /historical societies in the places they lived & died for wills, property records etc.”
My friend said the Babcock Lineage conformed with another source, and is probably trustworthy material.
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The Starr Lineage: I was quite amazed to hear that there may be two more unrecorded generations in the Starr Lineage, and that some of the recorded names may be different than originally thought. I have included that part of the Starr Lineage where changes may be indicated, and need more research. See bold black entries below, which suggest changes are needed.
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MATERNAL FAMILY TREE - STARR LINEAGE
1 Dr. Comfort Starrcame to this country on the Mayflower from Ashire England in 1620.
2 Thomas Starr. was put in prison for being sympathetic with the Indians.
He was later released and given a tract of land in Connecticut as compensation. He raised his family in Thompsonville, CN.
3. Elias Starr(The One World Tree on Ancestry.com names this ancestor as Josiah)
(The One World Tree on Ancestry.com names two more generations, Benjamin Starr and another David Starr)
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4. David Starr
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5. Johnathon Starr was married to Sally. The couple had three children, Sara and William J. (third unknown.) (The One World Tree on Ancestry.com names this ancestor as Elnathan)
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6 William J Starr,was born Nov. 8, 1843.He died Mar. 19, 1907.
He married Eliza Jane Reynolds (Dutch) in Fallsburg NY. She was born Jan 20, 18-- and died Oct. 7, 1886. Her parents were Andrew Reynolds and Catherine Vanbenscoten (Dutch)
They were one of the first Free Methodist families in the country.
They had 13 children in all, in New York State, including Martha Starr Strong, Sarah Starr Paul, Emma Starr Van Inwegen, Margaret Starr Main, George Starr, Willard Starr, Laura Starr Bowers, Andrew Starr, Flora Starr Wheat, Louella Starr Case, Ava Starr Frazier, Herman Starr, and Arthur Starr.
Two additional sisters are also named in the One World Tree on Ancestrry.com. but I suspect these may be cases where a second name was used, or they died as babies, as my great grandmother Laura personally told me there were thirteen children in all, and she had twelve brothers and sisters. Also I believe her middle name was Jane, but have no documentation.(I was about eleven. Ruth Zachary.)
The first post of the Biographical Pages of the Bowers Family was posted on March 24, 2010, and will now resume. The Starr Lineage pre-dated information I have on the Bowers Family, so I posted those Biographical Pages to begin a sequential order of the remaining pages. Hopefully the dates will help readers put the information into the correct sequence.-Ruth Zachary.
Writing and Page Layouts of Biological Pages shown here are the Copyright of Ruth Zachary.
Laura Starr was an older sister of Arthur. Arthur stayed with Laura and Alfred Bowers when he was young. For the time being,I have no more biographies in the Starr lineage. If further research or contributions from other family branches are forthcoming, they will be added at a future time. The next lineage to be included will be the Bowers lineage.
If the names, Starr, Bowers, Babcock, Newton, Gochenhour, Fewless, Valencourt, Liskum, Weaver, or Yale, are in your Family Tree, we might be related.
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There may be information on this site which is of interest to you, and I would like to expand this material to include shared findings from others as a means of networking about mutual family history. Contact me in the form under the heading provided, or become a follower on this blog.
To see the images on this site, click on the photo. An enlarged version will appear, and a second opportunity to enlarge it again will appear as a magnifying glass.Click on the arrow at the top left to return to the main pages of the blog.
These biographical pages are numerous. I will probably have to delete them from this site at some future date to make room for additional information. If you wish to use information published here, try to visit regularly to do so. If you know of others interested in any of the Lineages mentioned in the Family Trees included here, please tell them. I plan to include documents and photographs and other kinds of information that are in my own collection at various times, when related to the lineage I am featuring at any particular time. Registering as a Follower on this site can result in having the posts sent to you at your e-mail address.
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I encourage other relatives to contribute to this site for the benefit of all with an interest in our common heritage. Authors, photographers, and other contributors of relevant Genealogical Information published on this site will be attributed with their name and Copyright Notice.
I will post the family biographies I have compiled, to share with all the extended family in our common lineage.These pages explain more about the lives of people than a simple family tree, including pictures, and provides some background for those who never knew those ancestors.
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The first begins with the with the Starr Lineage and follows family branches if the information is available.These biographies were taken from family information, letters, journals, family trees, obituaries, and news clippings. It should be noted, obituaries are not always reliable. Not all the information is complete or accurate. The biographies will be posted in the sequence they were written, and as chronologically as I can manage. I will try to assign dates to family names, to make it as easy as possible to follow an order which makes sense. Biographical Pages will appear under that label in the sidebar.
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The pages that contain information about living persons will be only briefly mentioned, to connect the name to the family lineage. In many cases names are already public, as in newspaper articles or in obiturary notices, where much of the biographical information came from. Birth dates and addresses will be omitted, and recent pictures as well, to protect the identity of individuals.
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The size and number of pages is limited by the Blogger program. I am using the largest resolution possible and hope the information will be fully visible. Click on the image to see a larger view. The hard copies are of course in higher resolution.
