Seasons and song's

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The famous 60's rock band The Byrd's sing one of my favorite songs.  Turn, Turn, Turn.  The  lyrics are an adaptation of one of my most beloved passages in the Holy Bible: Ecclesiastes 3:1

I do believe that there is a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to sow. a time to kill, a time to heal and a time to dance. 

I try to keep this song and these words in my mind as I recall events that have happened in my life.  Everything in my 52 years of proliferates growth has happened for a reason.  I often look beyond my multiple years to the centuries of life that preceded me and I wonder, did my ancestors believe the same?

My season of life is marked by two tragic turns of events.  The first event happened on my Maternal Grandmother's side of the family.  I'll call this the Season of Slain. 

My 7th Great Grandfather's name was Benjamin Slane.   By all accounts, he is a true survivor.

From my research on Ancestry.com I came across a article that explains how the Slane family came to the great North American Country from Dublin County,  Meath,  Ireland. 

If you are related to a person with the last name of Slane then you are related to Benjamin. The first recorded Slane in North American came via Benjamin Slane.  I do believe that Benjamin's Irish mother prayed a hearty Irish blessing over him every night. If  I am right then I can only imagine that it was this particular blessing. May your Joy's be as deep as the Ocean.  Your troubles as light as it's foam and may you find sweet peace of mind where ever you may roam. 

According to an article titled  Capon Valley, Its Pioneers and Their Descendants, 1698 to 1940 Volume II.  Between the year 1700 1710, it is reported that Benjamin Slane set sail from Meath Ireland to North America.  Not far from the North American shore, along with the coast of New Jersey, the ship that ole Grandpa Slane was sailing on sank.  Ben survived by hanging on to a piece of debris from the ship wreckage and swimming toward shore and thus began a new season in his life.  He could have been killed.  Thank God and the heaven's above it was not yet his time to wither away.  He survived.

Benjamin eventually married and settled down in Maryland before finally creating a homestead in Fairfax Virginia. We who are born of Slane lineage and have danced into our own season of life should shout a hearty Irish blessing to the heavens in gratitude to Mr. Slane.

The second turn of events is ever so tragic and heartbreaking yet poetic and beautiful for it was known as the Season of Rufus S. Cowden.

There is a man on my family tree by the name of Rufus S. Cowden. His life was but a sapling that never truly came to bear fruit.   I am not related by blood, marriage, DNA or otherwise but there he is a dangling leaf on my ancestral tree.

Mr. Cowden played a very important role in my lineage.  Rufus was born in 1880.  He lived in Vinton, County, Ohio and he married a woman named Josie Belle Bishop on October 5th, 1901.  Like any newly married couple, I can only assume that they both looked forward to whatever the future held for them.  I can imagine them planning out their life.   I'm sure their dreams included a beautiful home built somewhere on Josie's family farm.  I imagine that home included hand made furnishings and a roaring fire in the fireplace and dreams of filling that house with the pitter patter of little feet that would fill that house with love, laughter and the feeling of home.  For a season they lived that dream.  Then in 1904, Josie Belle Bishop Cowden found herself a widow.  Rufus had died and their season of wedded bliss was over.

I can imagine that Josie wept and mourned the loss of her beloved husband.  

In 1908 Josie's story took a marvelous turn in that she began to heal from her tragedy and remarried.  That marriage began a new season in life with a new man by the name of Henry Garfield Hill. They are my maternal great grandparent's.  The parents of my very own maternal grandfather.  You see had Rufus S. Cowden lived I would not have been born.  Eighty-six years after Mr. Cowden's season on earth ended, my life sprang forward and continues on.  I literally and figuratively owe Rufus S. Cowden my very life.

Many seasons of coming and going.  Every page in my Book of Life is filled with many stories of these seasons of time.  I have witnessed the beauty of birth and felt the tight icy grip of death.   I have walked through the season's of suffering and felt the harsh cruel reality of pain.   I have danced at weddings and wept for every leaf that fell from my beautiful Willow tree. 

  "To every season turn, turn, turn, and a time to every purpose under Heaven"  The Byrd's.