Thanks for all your suggestions to help me. However, I do know that the proper spelling of the name was "BOWLING" as that was the name on his son's death certificate and on census records. I did all my initial research on the Poling idea and came up empty. There are also land records when Nancy Ann Bowling bought land from her brother, John Lane, for a house. Either her husband died very young or he abandoned his wife and child. I had wondered if the Civil War could have been the culprit, but he was gone by 1850. Another one of life's little mysteries. Jeanne