BOWERS FAMILY BIOGRAPHICAL PAGES

The Bowers Family Biographical Pages.

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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.

A POEM ABOUT RUTH BOWERS

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I Never Knew Rosella Ruth 1902

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I have two likenesses of her, and a letter

written to her parents, just after she

was married in 1902. Nearly every

other paragraph mentioned “Charlie.”

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In the first photograph, her hair was pulled

severely back from her symmetrical face,

her round heavy-lidded blue–gray eyes

stared out under carefully shaped brows,

and a strong chin held her blended round

cheeks in place. Her plainly pinked lips

seemed motionless over a black

bodice lined with a white parson’s collar.

She had retouched the photo herself.

Was it the retouched woman who

willingly surrendered to death, and left

an infant and a devastated Charles behind?

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Aunt Lillian’s photo of her was less formal,

less perfect than the family recollections.

A vital, direct, and hopeful gaze looked

at me openly as if curious about what kind of

granddaughter I had become. I noticed

her face was not symmetrical at all,

left ear and eye slightly lower than the right,

with a hint of blood, dark in sensuous lips.

Her mouth and chin were still determined,

but did I imagine a hint of mischief ?

And wisps of hair, escaped in wayward

streaks from that disciplined cap of hair.

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She looked so familiar. That face could

have been mine, once, was the face

I saw in the mirror when I was young;

The face in the photograph shared

my features; the same round heavy eyes,

except brown, like Charlie’s, a drooping

left eye and ear like hers, nose straight

but tilting up. In the mirror

I saw that at my age now, I was like her

grandmother, instead of she being mine.

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I was often told I was her namesake and

had inherited her “gift,” a rare artistic talent.

In this influence, I have lived my life

with determination to redeem the gift

we each were given at birth. I view her now,

as a mere girl of only twenty- three, scry

her face for inner strengths, and wonder at

her weaknesses, by which to measure

the lessons I have learned, that might

have fulfilled the life she didn’t get to live.

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Writing and Vintage Montage are the sole Copyright © of Ruth Zachary.

STARR LINEAGE IN MICHIGAN

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Starr Family Biographies.

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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.

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Writing and page layouts of these family biographical pages is the Copyright © of Ruth Zachary.

A POEM ABOUT FLETCHER CREEK, MESICK MI

Birdcalls, Spring 1950

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In mid-May we move upstairs.

The living quarters expand.

My mother opens the windows

letting the spring breeze blow

musty air away. The crosswind lifts

the curtains in sheer joy before

Mama can insert the screens.

the air smells of snow soaked earth,

and is sparkled with birdsongs.

Mama listens. She knows them all,

Killdeer, Robin, Lark, and Finch.

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She layers my bed with hefty quilts.

I do not complain, remembering

their cozy warmth when nights still smell

of lingering snow, blown across the fields

from the deep forbidding woods,

where coyotes and even bear may lurk,

and where I fear to go. Across the bed,

I lay looking through that window,

dreaming of summer days ahead.

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Outside, my father directs the farmer

hired to plow our garden, though

much leveling must still be done

before the first planting, two weeks

hence, timed with cycles of the moon.

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My room seems to open out.

The prairie grass below spreads

its golden reach to the leafless gray

of the still wintry woods,

while in our yard, the timid lilac

dreams of blooms yet to come.

My window, still open, lets in the sounds

of hatchling insects, and one bird’s serenade.

It is a voice I have never heard,

soft, mellow and melancholy.

Entranced, I whistle the tones

to remember, so I may learn its name.

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Sunday is devoted to an excursion

in the woods to see the creek, a

place I have never seen. The brook

curls around a valley and a yellow house.

Whip-poor-will Haven is written

over the door, occupants unknown.

Holding my little sister’s hand,

Mama whistles the song of a bird,

She says it is the Whip-poor-will’s call.

It is my bird, the one that called to me

the night before. I feel a chill, knowing

I will remember this day forever.

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Writing is the Copyright © of Ruth Zachary. Image from F. Babcock's Collection, Photographer Unknown.

STARR FAMILY BIOGRAPHIES

The above biographical pages include photographs of members of the Starr lineage. Click on the corner of an image to see a larger version. Not all of the original information was dated, and I do not know the photographers. The layout and written information was by Ruth Zachary. ©

ARE THESE YOUR ANCESTORS?

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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.

Memories of an Accident in 1910

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.
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Writing is the Copyright of Ruth Zachary.

The Starr Lineage Biographical Pages.

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

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