7. Lynne Cowan Dec 1889 - 1907
Lynne Cowan
Lynne Elizabeth Cowan was born December 9, 1889 to Bill Cowan and Delia Carr when Delia was age 19. Dudley Cowan told me back in 1972 that young girls often worked at a neighboring farm for keep and Della Carr, a neighbor girl, was working as a maid in the Cowan house and helping to care for the children. A child was born to Dell by Bill just a few months prior to when Bill’s wife Margaret died. The child was named Lynne and she and her mother remained in the household. In 1900, the U.S. Census of Shenford (Anselm) Township lists Lynne as ten years of age and the Owego School lists her as a student there during the 1901-1902 school year. Lynne grew up on the farm at Owego and died on January 25, 1907 at the young age of 17. The cause of her death is unknown, but as was common in those days, it may well have been the flu and pneumonia.
Lynne is buried in the Sheldon city cemetery just a few markers to the left of the grave of Bill’s wife Margaret Cowan. An inscription on Lynne’s gravestone states, “There is a reaper whose name is death.” Not to get off topic here but part of my reason to write this genealogy is to get a sense of what life was like for our ancestors in those early days. Well, this inscription has a very bleak sense about it. Words like hopelessness, abandonment and perhaps anger come to mind. Do these words connote the helplessness felt in toiling on earth that reluctantly gives up its bounty; does it speak to Bill’s tired body at age 67; does it speak to the loss of beauty and promise found in youth?
In September of 1972, Lynne’s brother Lee visited Sheldon and spent a little time at her grave and took a photo of the gravestone and it looked a lot better then than 2012 when we later visited there. There are four other Cowan graves adjacent to Lynne: 1) Lynne’s father William M. Cowan (1840-1918) (section 12, lot 8 but no marker), 2) Lynne’s father’s first wife Margaret (1845-1890), 3) Lynne’s older half-sister Elizabeth Cowan Nead (1881-1922) and 4) Elizabeth’s daughter Margaret Ann who died at 39 days in January of 1896. In the summer of 1996 Paul Nead, grandson of Elizabeth Nead laid a headstone marker on Elizabeth his grandmother’s grave. In October of 2012, my wife Nancy and I took a trip to Sheldon and later visited their graves. Lynne’s soapstone grave marker was overgrown with moss and I scrapped and brushed most of it off. I’m not sure anyone will ever visit these graves again.
Lee’s daughter Doris had a large full-length portrait of Lynne that was left to her when Lee died in 1963. The portrait was apparently with Dell’s things when she died in 1938 and was given to Lee. Dell kept the portrait for over forty years and her son Lee kept it for about thirty more. Doris has had the portrait in her possession for over thirty years and that photo of 1895 is shown above. That photo, along with the many others that Lee’s daughter Doris had was sent to me in October of 2012 by Doris’ dear friend Della Katon after Doris died.
So after all of this, what do we know of Lynne? She grew up in what may have been odd circumstances in her family; she seemed to be healthy on the adjacent photo taken when she was six; she attended Owego school; and, based on the inscription on her grave marker, fate had a strong and steady place in their lives even as her family faced grief and loss. Did she learn to sew and cook, help keep house and wash, go to parties and laugh?