The outlaw in the family...

When I was a a kid I idolized my paternal grandfather, John Oscar. When I came to know him, he lived on a small farm with my paternal grandmother Ida Frances in Stockton, California. He could do no wrong. But that was a little bit of fantasy that hid rather a lot of difficult behavior- he could be a pain in the butt when he put his mind to it.

I called him Pa (god knows how I decided on that name! He was emphatic that he not to be called Grandpa- 'pick a name just not Grandpa!'). On reflection, he was a strident 'my way or the highway' guy who had managed trading posts and general stores in the mining areas of territorial Arizona, moved to California where he owned his own grocery, worked for Piggly Wiggly markets, and managed a few different Safeway stores. He retired from Safeway when his job went away during the depression, then supervised a US Army warehouse at Sharpe's Depot in Stockton during WW-II. From what I've been able to learn about him doing genealogical research and recalling family stories, his personality was forged in the fires of growing up faster than he should have. And that's the story which follows.

John Oscar's father was John Jacob Bowman; John Jacob was born in Feb 1858. By 1860 (not yet two years old) John Jacob's father had died and his mother was forced to find foster homes where her children could live. The Bowman family had lived on a farm in Western Pennsylvania and, without his father to run things or deal with banks and businesses, the farm was apparently lost. Without the central focus of the farm and attendant family, the Bowman family scattered to the winds. John Jacob was devastated by these events and the loss of a structured family of brothers, sisters and parents; he never really got over it.

By the time of the 1870 US Census, John Jacob was living with Joseph Steichner and his family. John Jacob was listed as an 11 year old farm laborer but according to stories he told my grandfather, he lived as part of the Steichner family. He later told my grandfather, John Oscar, that he was part Jewish as he participated in all aspects of Steichner family life.

Time moved on and by 1880 John Jacob was living in the Minneapolis area where he had some relatives. He met and married Ida Mae Smith in 1881. My grandfather, John Oscar, was the first of his three children. John Jacob's wife, my paternal g-gm (great-grandmother), died not long after the birth of their third child, Ida Mae. After his wife's death John Jacob got in contact with his sister Marguerite H Bowman (the only sibling I'm certain he had kept in touch with). She lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Marguerite had no children and was single. She agreed to come to St Paul to care for the 3 kids while John Jacob continued to work at Ramsey Bakery where he had a managerial role.

John Jacob had significant heart problems and by the late 1890s he was bed-ridden. If he died, and that was the prognosis, he foresaw his family repeating the disaster of his own early childhood as his sister intended to return to Pittsburgh with only Ida Mae. She had no desire to raise Ida Mae's sibling brothers John Oscar and Charles David. That would guarantee a repetition of his own fractured childhood. He was determined to keep that from happening.

In the last weeks before he died, he called his eldest son to his bedside and extracted a promise to keep the remaining family of himself, Charles David (my grand uncle) and Ida Mae (my grand aunt) together after his death. He had hatched a plan with his two closest friends that involved all three children moving to live with his deceased wife's sister, Ella Smith Jones. Ella lived with her husband and family in Buffalo, Wyoming. Buffalo is about 800 miles due west of St Paul, Minnesota and in 1910 there was no clearly marked nor mapped roads.

In the mean time John Jacob's sister Marguerite was laying the groundwork to be handed custody of the youngest child, Ida Mae, who she would take with her to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to grow up as her daughter. The 2 boys would be placed in foster care in St Paul. She did this thru a local judge (his name was Bazille and he was the judge of the probate court). Judge Bazille heard her story and apparently agreed with her plan. The two boys, John Oscar and Charles David, would be farmed out to 2 separate local families and left behind in St Paul/Minneapolis recreating the very thing that was so devastating to John Jacob when he was a child. 

I have no idea if the judge had insight into John Jacob's desire to keep his family together after his decease, but he was told in clear terms by John Jacob's friends that those were his wishes. During the course of the proceeding Judge Bazille demanded that the children be brought to his court. But that didn't happen. John Jacob's 2 closest friends ended up paying substantial fines and being found in contempt of court. One of the 2 was jailed on a contempt charge.

Below is a summary of the story as it was initially reported...

Here's what happened. John Jacob secured promises from his closest friends to provide a wagon and team to my then 16 year old grandfather John Oscar. John Oscar was to gather up the other 2 children, Charles David and Ida Mae, and take them by wagon to Buffalo, Wyoming. The wagon would be outfitted with supplies and feed for the horses sufficient to get them from the St Paul area of Minnesota to Buffalo, Wyoming.

I can't imagine this was done in Feb 1900 when the first newspaper article (above) was published. But they had already been gathered up and must have been hidden away till the weather cleared enough to make the journey. February in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming is no place for any living creature but a mountain goat (there's a reason they're called 'Big Horn Mountains').

In later articles published by the St Paul Express Ella Jones is mentioned. Ella Jones was Ida Mae's sister, Ella Smith Jones. Ella lived in Buffalo with her husband John A Jones. She is the person that John Jacob had enlisted to take care of all three children. Ella and her husband John Jones lived in Buffalo along with their own children. But the Jones's were willing to take on 3 more to fulfill John Jacob's request.

By whatever means necessary, that's what John Oscar (his friends called him JO) managed to do. He made it to Buffalo, got the kids to the home of his aunt Ella by the time of the 1900 US Census. The 1900 US Census for Buffalo is dated 1-2 June 1900. Sometime after the 1900 census was taken in Buffalo, JO returned to St Paul to face the music. Ultimately Marguerite returned to Pittsburgh alone and JO returned to Buffalo. But that wasn't the end of it.

It turned out Ida Mae was a difficult child and not inclined to follow orders from anyone. Hmm... who do we get to manage a difficult teenager? You guessed it: time to call upon Marguerite. Again! But this time it was for keeps... sort of. Ida Mae is shown in the US Census for 1910 to be still living in Buffalo but in 1912 she was married to John Havican in Pittsburgh. Apparently that didn't last long and by the time of the 1920 US Census she was a single mother living in Pittsburgh and working as a stenographer for an auto dealership. 

Ida Mae had one son, Jack Havican. My grandfather had a photo of him in uniform taken during WW-II when he was a Marine sergeant. My father had learned from my grandfather, John Oscar, that after the war Jack Havican spent time in a military hospital in Maryland likely suffering from PTSD (it was called 'shell shock' at that time of WW-II). Whatever his issue Jack had said he was going to find and kill anyone he could by the name of Bowman. That was not long after I had joined the the USMC Reserve and my father wanted me to be alert to that threat. I'm fairly certain he never saw active duty again and that those issues were resolved before he was turned loose from the VA hospital in Silver Springs, Maryland.

Charles David, JO's younger brother, stuck it out in Buffalo (by all accounts he had no desire to move there and had wanted to stay in St Paul) but apparently returned to St Paul before moving to California where he met and married Elora Beachboard.

There's more...