The Starr Lineage

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Family Album 1880s

Pictures were hard to come by

Back in the 1800s.

The first of those were tintypes.

Each was one of a kind.

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Usually if you lived long enough

You might inherit your own likeness

as an infant; yourself already fading,

your mirror image sagging,

like memories of

your departed relatives.

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Many rare pictures were kept by

their children, and

If someone died young, God knows

who got the photographs.

My mother had a baby picture

of Ethel, but not of her own mother.

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You imagine your own collected

Heirlooms will be inherited by

your children’s children, but more

often than not they go to strangers.

A painting by my grandmother Ruth

is owned by Esther’s

Granddaughter.

I have few photographs of

my great grandparents ancestors;

Starrs or Bowers

before they were forty or beyond.

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Pictures of their early homes were

taken as an afterthought

decades after moving away.

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Any images I have of them

were taken by my mother

or Aunt Lillian, herself childless,

who ironically became

self-appointed family historian.

She wanted us all to remember.

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After she died,

Lillian’s nephew Alfred auctioned

off her hand made rugs; and

sold her collection of old photos

to a stranger for the monetary

division of her estate, instead of

distributing her legacy

of family heritage among her heirs.

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Writing is the Copyright of Ruth Zachary

The Starr Lineage

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Family Biography Pages

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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.

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I invite others who have more complete or accurate information than is included here to let me know via a message on this site. If others wish to collaborate with this information, I will post it on this site, and attribute the photos and resources and authorship of other persons, with copyright © .

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Ruth Zachary

WHENCE COMETH THE CUCKOO?

The Cuckoo's Child
As an unborn child, you fluttered
like a caged bird, practicing to
disrobe yourself of my fleshly husk.
Even before fully formed, my child,
you struggled to redefine your
boundaries, while yet confined
by the walls of the nest.

Nature decreed expansion
as you mindlessly attacked both
the source of your nourishment
and of your confinement.

Even as motherly instinct
compelled me to feed you,
I did not shape the egg,
as you did not choose your parent.
I understood only as you fledged;
you are a foreign species.
You are a cuckoo’s child.

By Ruth Zachary Written in 1976


The name of this blog and this project was taken from this poem.


All images and writing are the copyright © of Ruth Zachary, unless otherwise attributed.

BOWERS LINEAGE, to 1920s

About Biographical Pages- A series of biographical essays will be arranged under this Label. The information is supplemental to the family trees, with pictures of some of the persons included under this category. Obituaries are often inaccurate, and I have no data at all for some people. It is my hope that as relatives discover this site, they will contact me and send supplemental materials, hopefully with documentation. Any one contributing to this project will be attributed, and if their photos and writing are enclosed, copyright © and date will be included with their name, or the person who originated these items if known.

To organize this information, a viewer may choose a sequence from the Family Tree and file a biographical page in the same order.

The information was derived from news clippings, obituaries and other sources. Enhanced photos, page layouts, and writing on these biographical pages are the Copyright© of Ruth Zachary.

Alfred Bowers, The Violin Maker

The Violin Maker,Vintage Montage by Ruth Zachary © Includes Alfred Bowers, Battle scene (re-enactment) Certificate listing those in New York Company C of the Civil War, Letters on Muster Papers Alfred wrote to first wife Mary in 1863(approx.), second wife Laura, five of their daughters, two homes in Kingsley, and Alfred with his violins. Muster Papers were forms for recording service accounts by soldiers to document pay roll checks.


Union Soldier’s Lament

I feared, my dear, not seeing you again
but hid my passion from the public eye.
You took my hand before I took the train.
I did not kiss your lips nor hold you nye.

I did not know the torment in your breast
held close in silence as you failed to write
a word, while I anguished there without rest
as I lay lonely on my cot at night.

I scrawled a letter in reflected light
on paper snatched from flames before it burned.
I sent my payroll home when I could write;
eight days to reach you; but no note returned.

I made it home in two years more, alive
While you, our children all were gone in five.


Sonnet by Ruth Zachary© Dec. 2008

Alfred Bowers/ The Violin Maker

BIRTH 1939

Baby. Photograph by Forrest Babcock. 1939

Birth

I was pushed into it.

I was pulled into it.

I came

beating my arms and legs,

protesting leaving

the warmth of my mother’s body;

away from my source;

separate.

I inhaled

deeply, and the air forced

its painful way

into my lungs.

I was breathing,

alive in this excruciating world

And I protested again.

Then I was lifted and gently placed

upon my mother’s breast.

A pair or arms

cradled me lovingly

and I settled

closer to this new warmth

and lay quiet.

written Nov. 1958 by Ruth Zachary©

Angels and Demons, Image by Ruth Zachary

The Accidental Child 1944

The Accidental Child 1944

It wasn’t known how the fire began,
probably sparked by burning leaves,
flying in the breeze. It was discovered
behind the garage, burning in the long
dry grass of late October 1943.

Having already laundered much
of the day, Mama then spent
several hours fighting the fire with
wet towels and buckets of water,
and pumped by Granddad, afraid
the rented garage might burn down.

She put the fire out, but she did not
finish the laundry. She was doubled
over in pain. That was how their second
pregnancy ended in miscarriage. Ava
was heart-broken by that loss.

Daddy told relatives
they had decided not to have more
children; that they would be too old,
at forty and forty-two, but not long after,
Mama was expecting again.

Daddy was terribly embarrassed over
the timing, so soon after the miscarriage,
and told everyone it was an accident,
something Mama did not confirm or deny.

When I got older, I remembered
the looks exchanged between them
when Daddy said it, and later how
Mama explained she was in charge
of birth control, and by default the lack of it.

Mama was delighted from the start
to have another chance at a second child.
I think the story about the accident
was my father’s invention; allowed
to stand by my mother’s omission.

But my sister grew up believing she
was an accident, while I was on purpose.

Written July 27, 2009

MICHIGAN FARM, 1940s

Ox Team, 1911, Mesick

Michigan Farm, 1940s

Our grandparents came before
the virgin forests were cut.
They blasted and burned,
denuding fields cleared to the horizon,
revealing light shows at sunset
and the late night aurora borealis,
which entertained us in childhood.

When we were small, we could lie down
on prairie grass and stubble;
native weeds so brittle,
they held us up above the earth
like eastern mystics on a bed of nails.

Our father cursed that sod
when he plowed the quarter acre
garden in those fallow fields
that had failed him years before
forcing him to take a city job.

Over farmed, the Sandy loam
that remained, was held firmly
only by sod which went dry in summer,
under the sun's hot eye,
siphoning water from the surface,
as the rest, on deeper levels
sought its way to lake level

We should have worshiped
the quack grass with its matted roots;
thanked it for holding the topsoil,
and preventing the relentless prairie wind
from taking what little dirt was left.

Well Readers, I am finally back from many summer distractions, including eye surgery to mend a macular hole, which caused a distortion in the center of my vision. I am still trying to catch up with both the yard, house and creative work that was left undone. Things seem to be improving, and I am able to use the computer again. Please be patient and expect that my return to this blog will be a slow process.

Writing and Images are the © Copyright of Ruth Zachary, as of the date of this post.