Think Positive Cyber

Today’s Cowles Mountain genealogy note follows Mary Martha Shumaker, born 2 April 1837 near Eminence in Morgan County, Indiana, and listed as having died about 1923 in Morgan County, Illinois. This research page is part of TG215839 and focuses on the Shumaker, Shoemake, Blunk, and Bowman family lines. The current working relationship path being studied is: Mary Martha Shumaker → Thomas S Bowman → Polly Myrtle Bowman → Noma Vade Smith → Doug O’Neal → Jeremiah O’Neal.

Mary Martha Shumaker is listed as a child of Thomas J Shoemake and Jemima Blunk. In 1856, she is reported to have married Abel Bowman, who had moved with his parents to Indiana as a young child during the broader nineteenth-century westward migration from North Carolina and other eastern states into the Midwest. The family story places Abel and Mary Martha first in Boone County, Indiana, near present-day Whitestown, where they farmed before later relocating to Morgan County.

This working genealogy also preserves family-context notes about Abel Bowman as a grain farmer, trader, and hardworking settler whose barn was often filled with harvested grain that could be traded during lean years. The Civil War reference in the current notes is incomplete, so it should be treated only as a prompt for future research until a military, pension, draft, local-history, or family-source record is identified. A detailed GitHub Pages research page has been prepared here: https://map.j03.page/mary-martha-shumaker-family-research.html.