Note: this letter is posted two weeks after its writing following the finding and filling of a new freezer,
and joining in appreciation and memorials of a couple of significant extended family members passing, and working to find land legs and lights finally on after an awe-inspiring adventure. We also are grateful for the celebration of a happy 86th for sweet Mom. Also, appreciating her anniversary number 65--Wow!
A Freedom Light Festival to hear about the Mayflower. Courageous citizens choosing representative government. Stories. Cannon firing. Candle making.
Dear Family and Dear Friends, penned 10 October 2023
After a whirlwind month, we have landed, and are working to settle in -- to prepare for winter and white to top our mountain peaks! So grateful, we are for the promise of heaven to be before our face, to the right hand and the left. For our temple assignment respite late September, Val agreed to marry a family visit to Georgia with an adventure to sniff out clues about Barbara Bowers, wife to Val’s third great grandfather, George Starkey. A kind helper at Salt Lake’s Family Search library reviewed George’s father Frederick’s Northern Neck Land Grant and recommended looking at his neighbors. The first book we opened detailed some land bordering Frederick Starkey’s in “My Journey Over the Mountains” 1750 written by a budding Virginia surveyor, 18-year-old George Washington.
An intense gathering of background material geared us to prepare for the Saturday 2,000-mile flight. 
Sunday morning, after a joyful Winchester, Virginia stake conference to prepare to receive their new temple, announced this past April, Paula and Barry Bryant opened up the Winchester stake Family Search center just for us—helping us pour over maps and print pages to document Frederick’s service in the Revolutionary War. Below, is a uniform representing what this Great Grandfather might have dressed in as he served.
What followed: a restful afternoon jaunt west over Cacapon Bridge, West Virginia, 20 minutes west of Winchester.
As we turned south
along a significant meandering waterway (the Cacapon River,)
we greeted neighbors 
to ask about “the oldest person around,” Bob Shoemaker opened his door explaining it was his birthday. 
No phone. No TV. Just birds and landscaping. Bob knew the area. The people. He shared names and a few details to point us forward.
Monday, at Winchester’s Handley library archives, a helpful archivist, Toby, offered folders filled with Bowers family records. She located a book with handwritten records of the marriage of Barbara Bowers to George Starkey, 4 August 1797. by Alexander Balmain, the itinerate minister for four decades in the Christ Episcopal Church (below). Balmain, cousin to President James Madison, would also consecrate the marriage of the fourth president of the United States to his wife Dolly Payne Todd.
Note the handwritten description and amount paid by George "Starcke" and Barbara Bowers, at the bottom of the above record. Below, is Christ Episcopal Church, including a tomb of the English Lord, first official proprietor of the property lated deeded to George's father, Frederick Starkey.
the county seat, where county clerk, Eric, explored with us cloth bound and 200-year-old probates, minutes, and wills. 
Eric detailed difficulties of his city changing hands 56 times (often without a shot fired) during the Civil War --intact records, rescued by wagon, hidden by cave, guarded with musket fire. 
Fingering two-hundred-year-old documents, pouring over an 1803 will and 1806 probate for Frederick Starkey to parcel his belongings inspired humility.
