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.
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Any information you Contribute will be Attributed to you, and if your photos or writing are used on this site, they will be Attributed to the originator or with your name and © Copyright notice.
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.
This Poem about my great-grandmother Laura Bowers is an experimental poem, in which the left side represents her spoken voice, and the right side represents the voice in her mind. It is written in the first person point of view about an accident in which my mother was scalded. In this I attempted to show some of the attitudes of family interactions, and of course in the end, it is a fictional interpretation of events told to me by my mother, Ava Valencourt Babcock.
Notice to Readers:
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.
Biographical Pages are Copyrighted © by Ruth Zachary
.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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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.
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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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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.
