Biography: Olive Samantha Bower

Olive Samantha Bower was born in 1862, the daughter of David Bower and Caroline Snyder. She was born in the years that the Civil War was being fought and the young men of the county were enlisting, and later being drafted to service. Her father's brother was Dr. John Bower, one of five doctors in Salem Township, Clarion County.

Olive was four years old when her father died in 1866. David Bower had been drafted to serve in the Civil War, but as was accepted practice, he paid another man to serve in his stead. The war ended soon after this arrangement was made, but David Bower took ill and died of "white swelling". His wife, Caroline Snyder, was left with the debt of $400 to pay. Presumably because of having to find work, or possibly unable to withstand the stress of her situation, she gave her children to be raised by others.

Olive was raised in the home of Jacob Beals and his wife Clara. Jacob wrote his will in January of 1877, and three months later, on March 9, he died. Olive was fifteen years old. He provided for his wife, and for a gravestone for himself in the Emanuel Lutheran cemetery. To Olive he bequeathed the amount of $2000. She was to receive an annual payment of $150 until her twenty-first birthday, and then receive the remainder of the amount.

By 1882, when she would have been twenty, she became the second wife of her foster father's youngest brother, James Francis Beals. She became the step-mother of his two children, Bernice and Charles, who were probably about 6 and 8 years old. In March of 1883, she gave birth to a daughter, Arminta. A year later another daughter, Florence, was born.

Olive received the bequest left her by Jacob Beals, and turned it over to James Francis. (When he died in 1930, he acknowledged her gift in his will, and left $2,000 with interest to be divided among her three children).

In 1889, James F. and Olive had a third child, a son who was named James Elgie Beals.. This child was six years old when Olive died in childbirth. The infant, a girl, died as well. Both were buried at Salem Lutheran cemetery in Salem township.

James F. Beals eventually married a third time, but when he died in 1930 at age 86, it was with Olive that he chose to be buried.