The following notes were made by Arthur Finn Bowen after visiting
the Lunenburg Co, VA homeplace of his grandparents, Edwin H Bowen and Martha
Lewis Meldrum (probably a Lewis by birth). Edwin H Bowen was born about
1805 in VA according to his 1850 census. He married Martha in 1827 in Mecklenburg
Co where they were still living in 1838 when son Willis Oscar Bowen was
born. The family was in Lunenburg Co by 1846 when son Thomas Adam Bowen
was born and was listed on the 1850 census in Lunenburg Co. I have not
found the family on the 1860 census, but according to this, it would seem
that T A Bowen was still living in this home when he enlisted with the
Confederacy in 1861. The ancestry of Edwin H Bowen has not been determined
and even where exactly in VA he was born is not known. However, the reference
here to "William, Edwin, and the 'Old Man'" as the owners of the property
may be an important clue. The 1850 census did not reveal them. Arthur Finn
Bowen in another writing indicated that he believed that his Bowen ancestors
at least to his great-grandfather (father of Edwin H Bowen) and possibly
his gr-gr-grandfather were associated with Mecklenburg Co.
On Monday, Sept 7th, 1925, my father T A Bowen, in his eightieth year, and I left Blackstone, Va, about eight o'clock in the morning to visit his boyhood home in Lunenburg Co, Va. He had not been there since he left it a boy about sixteen years of age. The place had first to be located and as the names of places and the residents were new this gave us some trouble. In my father's boyhood days there had been a community somewhere near known as "Garys" and another known as "Flippin's Store." He was sure that once on the right road known then as it is now as Cox's Road that he would have no trouble in finding the old homeplace. He said he would know every path. In this he was mistaken as in sixty four years there had been many changes. He said the place was about twenty miles from Blackstone and beyond Kenbridge, Va which was known in his day as "Brown's Store". After driving the Dodge Coupe twenty three miles and getting into worse and worse roads, we enquired of an old colored woman as to our locality and the names of people living thereabouts. There were few names of people my father knew when a boy that were known to her; but she remembered two families by the name of Gary that lived a few miles away and she recalled that the "Oval Oaks" nearby once was called Flippin's Store. We asked how we would know the place, Oval Oaks, when we got to it. "There's nothing there but the old store place that is not used and the residence of another Bain." We drove about two miles back to the place and there found the daughter of Mr. Flippin (Mrs. Bain about sixty five years old) and she on being questioned could help us little until I mentioned "Coley Wallace and John Roach? then she knew. Her son T F Bain had married a neice of Coley Wallace and she said that a sister of Coley Wallace, ninety years old, was living at the old Wallace homeplace which was not far from the old Bowen homestead and the old Bowen graveyard.
Mr. Bain the son piloted us through the woods to the Wallace home and here we found a little old lady, brisk, energetic, lively, and interested as a girl of sixteen, and with a memory clean, clear, and sharp about everything that had ever transpired in that neighborhood. The home, which she said to her was a palace, was scrupulously neat and clean and surrounded with wonderful collections of flowers such as would do justice to a professional florist. These she took care of. She had a little greenhouse in the pines in which she wintered the tenderest flowers. She told us how we could find the old graveyard and how we could find the old homeplace. The graveyard was not but a few hundred yards from her home and contains the graves of my Father's mother - and the baby girl of Hicks Bowen. Miss Sarah remembered all about the Bowens. Said they lived in the tall house. "Yes", said my father, "it was two stories high." "No" replied Miss Sarah, "one and a half stories high, but it was the only house in the neighborhood more than one story high - we called it the tall house." She remembered my Grandfather and Grandmother - the circumstance of her death and the burial and the removal shortly after of my Grandfather to Mecklenburg Co, Va where he died and was burried. She said the place belonged to William, Edwin, and the "Old Man". That Hicks married a "Coley"; Henry a "Dodd"; and my father a "Goulder" Beckie, she called her = my mother's name was Susan Rebecca Fletcher Goulder.
The old home had been burned many years ago. There was no indication of it except for a dozen or more old apple trees and some shrubbery scattered about that had persisted through the years. Corn rows ran across the site where once the house stood. My father said there were two rooms down stairs; two rooms up stairs and two shed rooms; such a house as one found in that section at that time; a wonderful home as painted by the glamour and recollection of youth.
The graveyard was neglected and forlorn there were in it only two graves - my grandmother Bowen - she was a Lewis = and the baby neice of my father's; his Brother Hick's child. There was an old walnut tree growing at the head of these graves and a half dozen cedars marked the confines of the yard. The graves were sunken fallen in. And Miss Sarah Wallace suggestion that it be wind(?) in the graves fixed and shrubery planted. I may have more to say about this anon; but now I will add only the names of the ones I met on that visit ere their names will be blotted from my memory forever.
Mrs Sam Wallace = a young woman, married one of the grandsons of Coley
Wallace
Mrs. T F Bain, a neice of Coley Wallace and married to son of Mrs.
R L Bain who was the Miss Flippin - the daughter of the proprietor of Flippin's
Store now "Oval Oaks, Va."
Mr. T F Bain, the son and Mrs. R L Bain mentioned above
George Wallace and Edwin Wallace = young men granchildren of Coley
Wallace. These said they would fix up the graves if I desired it.
Miss Sarah told us about "Betty Gee" my father's school teacher = she
married W J Walthall and is living with Mrs. W H Gary, daughter of George
Walthall, Gen. Mgr. Kenbridge Hardware Co. and who is "Betty Gee's" son.
John - Carrie - Orgie Bowen - children of Hicks Bowen who went to Crab
Orchard, KY after the Civil War about 1867 = Hicks visited my father in
Blackstone about twenty years ago, or in 1905.