This message is for Jo Ann who wanted information about Bowens in Michigan. It is just a short abstract from DON RODDY'S SITE. He has a fascinating, and  very long, narration about DELLA LOUISE BOWEN (my great aunt) and her husband FRANKLIN. My grandmother, CLARA ELIZABETH BOWEN, is also featured. You will see, JoAnn, that the BOWENS were quite present on the Michigan scene. In this abstract DELLA is applying for a war pension. "DELLA Della continued her testimony, “I was born in Grove Township, Allegany County, New York. I do not remember living there. When I was two years of age the family removed to Michigan ….” The Bowen family no doubt traveled by canal boat up the newly completed Genesee Valley Canal where it connected to the Erie Canal at Rochester, NY. From Rochester they would have traveled westward on the Erie Canal to Buffalo, located at the eastern end of Lake Erie. From Buffalo they booked passage on one of the ships that plied the Great Lakes and voyaged the entire length of Lake Erie to where it was fed by the St. Claire River, thence up the river to Port Huron, Michigan. Della was the fourth child born to Emory Bowen and his wife, Deborah Elizabeth Gordon. The second child, Andrew, had died in infancy. Her older brother, James Harrison Bowen was probably born in New York around 1831, and her sister, Nettie Emily Bowen around 1840. Her younger brother, Lewis Addison Bowen, was born in New York around 1844. The Bowen’s settled in Ray Township in McComb County, Michigan, which is between Port Huron and Detroit near Lake St. Clair. They undoubtedly lived on and worked a farm while in that location - Della’s earliest memories were of this area, and she started school there, walking about two miles each way to the school house in Ray Center. When Della was about 9 years old, around 1850, the family moved into the town of Adrian, in Lenawee County near the southeast corner of Michigan, about 80 miles, as the crow flies, from Ray Center - a good distance to move by horse and wagon. Later they moved to a farm in the same county. Della’s younger brother, William Wallace Bowen, as well as her sister, Clara Elizabeth Bowen, was probably born while the family was farming in Ray Township. Her brother, Joseph Winfield (Scott) Bowen, may have been born there too, or he may have been born after the family moved to Lenawee County, as were her two youngest sisters, Emma May Bowen and Alice Luella Bowen. “I lived on that farm until my first marriage”, Della continued. Sometime around Christmas 1857, when Della was 16, she met a tall, attractive, charming, itinerant house painter named John Hollis, who was probably in Lenawee County drumming up work. Being a house painter in sparsely settled Midwestern farming country must have required him to do a great deal of traveling to find enough work to stay alive. John Hollis was pretty tight lipped about his family history, and Della never knew the names of his parents, or where they lived, or where he was born, or whether he had any siblings. She never even knew where he had lived. ..."