"Country Roads, Take Me Home, to the Place I Belong, West Virginia!"

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. 

 

Colors of autumn.  

Celebrating 30 years since our Seattle temple sealing 

Our Virginia friends reminded me that seasons can be a gift!  Please join us as we watch a changing of colors and reminiscing passages:                                                                        

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.  

 We visited Mr. Shoemaker again, offering a book on bird behavior, and traipsed trees and creek beds to prepare for two days at Romney, 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. 

Others also perusing the public pages, offered their understanding of the area and pointed us to a smaller creek, Tear Coat, to narrow our wondering about “where in the world were George and Barbara Starkey?”  We sauntered south,

 

searching to find the “oldest neighbors.” 

Arly Lee (at 93) and wife Peggy offered experience and understanding of their surroundings. 

(These are not Easter eggs.  Arly and Peggy have chickens that have a colorful diet/output!)

 

Shenandoah court house was next, ("Oh Shenandoah, we love to see you!") with deeds detailing grants from Lord Fairfax’s six million acres to peasants, then confiscated and offered to patriots, with land records and wills that included Bowers and surnames of Frederick's neighbors . Gratitude grew as we found indexes and kind clerks who kindly steered us amid a significant ongoing office remodel.  

(Above right:  Seal of Lord Fairfax, left:  X mark of Henry and Ann Bowers)

Friday led us to Savannah, Georgia 

(with hanging moss from trees and a lovely ocean view.)

Then, unfortunately for an unsuspecting armadillo and fortunately for some adventurers losing wanderlust, we landed late late onto a tilted bed in a tidied rambler awaiting Grandma and Grandpa to wander a university and a wildlife preserve.  

Sunday, our paths crossed with a missionary from Honduras.

The following week flowed with recipes, reading, Rumicube and Bananagrams.  

Morning walks. Story time. Conference.  Art gallery.  Pumpkin patch. 

("What's your business?!  I am NOSEY!")

 Lastly, our early early morning flight was made bearable 

by a Tuesday jaunt to an historic Florida town

 

 dinner and visit with loving mission friends.

 

Wednesday, a kind Kaysville daughter delivered us home safe

 to the overwhelming aroma of a freezer fuse flipped for 3 weeks, 

(Illustration from Piggy Loves Slop by Mo Willems) 

we continue to acknowledge the immediate goodness of God -- 

preeminent in personal passages as well as ancestors, progeny and friends. 

Home just in time to honor the passing of Roy Kendall, husband to my mom's sister Arlene.

"Isn't it fun when your brothers grow up and think they know something?" says Arlene's little sister.

Even more so when sister's college friend and roommate joins our family! 

(And is it not great when you find children of best friends who can also be related?)

(What greater joy than to find cousins of summers past minding their family in "truth," with memories of Love Bug and Jungle Book drive-in theaters, six boy cousins:  Marty (Carol),

Jeff, Greg (Laura, in group photo above)

Corey (Nadine), 

Chris (Brenda) 

Missing Gardell, our fun loving older brother to Chris, who passed when we were young adults. 

We also honor “Papa D,” endeared grandfather to Jacob, husband to our daughter, 

as we observe blessings to appreciate
the “small things” of home, neighborhood and beyond. 

we realize how we need Him -- 

with His gift of perspective and growth to lift the most challenging of moments. 

Blessings to you! 

 Love, Laurene and Val