Mary Bowe’s Book The Families as a Canavan Guide
Editor’s Note: Since Joe had mentioned my mother’s Canavan history alongside Jim Hart’s memoirs, I asked how he came to have a copy of it out in Oregon. Joe thinks what he received, from a cousin, was not one of her later, more complete works but an early draft that ended abruptly. I note that 500 copies of The Families were printed and circulated, so one evidently reached him. Joe describes receiving a digital copy of a hand-drawn family tree, chopped into three pages, which was valuable because it showed the more modern generations that Uncle Jim’s pedigree-focused history did not cover.
Transcript
Speakers: WJB — William J. Bowe; JH — Joseph Hart. Transcribed from the recording; punctuation added and obvious mis-hearings corrected.
WJB: But let me just ask you, you mentioned my mother’s work along with Jim Hart’s family memoirs. Do you remember how you got a copy out in Oregon, probably, of my mother’s 1970 Canavan history of the families? Do you remember?
JH: I think what I got of your mother’s was not one of her later works, which is probably more complete than what I got. But I must have gotten that from a cousin.
WJB: Yes, undoubtedly.
JH: I probably got in touch with somebody saying…
WJB: Well, I had to get in touch with somebody, too.
JH: Well, let me back up on that. Uncle Jim’s family history might’ve been something that was available in the family information that we had at home, possibly. Anyway, so your mother’s information came from somewhere, and I don’t remember exactly.
WJB: Yeah. Well, there were 500 copies that were printed up and circulated. So most of them got out, and obviously you ran into one of them along with Cousin Jim’s.
JH: Yeah. So, I received that later. That wasn’t one of the first documents that I used. But also, it seemed to end abruptly, so that’s why I think it was an early draft of something. The way I received it was a digital copy that turned into three pages, but it looked like it had been originally drawn, hand-drawn—
WJB: Yeah.
JH: —a family tree on a wider sheet of paper, so that when somebody wanted to copy it, they kind of chopped it up into three pieces. It might’ve been on one big piece of paper as well. Anyway, so that was particularly interesting, too, because it showed more of the modern generations that these other documents, Uncle Jim’s family history, didn’t tell me much about. He was focused on more of his pedigree, going from him back through his parents, his grandparents—
