Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice!

Corinth, Vermont, may be best known today as the filming location for Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, the cult classic where the dead and the living comically collide, but long before the Maitlands haunted their fictional farmhouse, my family had that covered. The family of Peter Bowen left their own eerie echoes in the town’s history. After all, he had already 'disappeared' from Merrimack, New Hampshire after an unfortunate encounter.

William Bradford has a name that stands out to historians.  When the name William Bradford Bowen came up in my own lineage, it was surprising that there was no clear path to the reputable former Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. This was an enigma since 32 existing family trees on a popular commercial site listed him but none sourced the path to the name. Having no known direct connection to the William Bradford of Plymouth, I wondered if perhaps there was one I was not yet aware, or perhaps he was named after an uncle or a grandfather and proceeded to dig deeper into his vital records.

This research began with my third great grandfather, Guy Bowen (1809-1890), who didn’t quite line up with his alleged father, William Bradford Bowen (1781-1835).  After Guy, all of the records for his descendants are clear until they reach me.  Pertaining to Guy and his father, the very first assumptions I made were to honor past researchers' findings:

	Son	Father
Name	Guy Bowen	William Bradford Bowen
Born	1 Jan 1809. Corinth, Vermont	29 May 1781. Coventry, Connecticut
Died	27 Jan 1890.  East Bolton, Quebec	27 Feb 1835. Orange County, Vermont
Parents	William Bowen and Anna Rowland	Christopher Bowen and Elizabeth
Spouse(s)	There are at least three, but not relevant to this discovery.	Anna Rowland
Marriage		17 Jan 1802

In seeking out the origin of the reference to “Bradford,” vital records were reviewed to build an accurate tree for Guy Bowen.  Guy’s death record lists his father’s name as William and his mother’s name as Anna but neither have registered middle names.  While Anna was easily established as the daughter of Richard Rowland and Jerusha Chadwick, originally of Connecticut, William's vital records were elusive.  Considering that his dates are populated in multiple repositories, I mistakenly assumed that records exist to support the posted dates, but only references to Find-a-Grave.com were present.

Find-a-Grave as a Source:

Because Find-a-Grave is crowd-sourced, it is only as reliable as the volunteers who maintain the millions of records published. However accurate, it is easily accessible and user friendly. After a simple lookup of one of the William Bradford Bowens listed with a date and location matching our William, a gravestone was located which references a young boy who died at six months old (left) and whose father’s name was also William. The other is for a grave located in Connecticut (right).  In person, the Connecticut grave is more legible, and the date of birth matches the above. 

This indicates that prior researchers had been mixing and matching dates, locations, and parents for our William Bowen. Until now, our ancestor existed in genealogical research in name only. He was a figurative amalgam of multiple people, all with like names who lived in the same vicinity in the early 1800s.

What does this mean in researching the correct William? Fact check everything. With the task of discerning the identity of OUR William Bowen, little was known about him.  The only clear facts were that he had a son named Guy who was born in 1809 in Corinth, Vermont, was married to Anna Rowland in 1802, and died some time after that. I reviewed the available sources in the Bradford district of Vermont for vital records, other Bowen families, probate records and deeds, and found a will for a William Bowen that was probated in Topsham, Vermont on 17 January 1825.  Corinth and Topsham are neighboring towns.  The will references an Anna Bowen.

	Old	New
Name	William Bradford Bowen	William Bowen
Born	29 May 1781.  Coventry, CT	?
Died	27 Feb 1835.  Orange County, VT	About 1824.  Topsham, VT
Parents	Christopher Bowen and Elizabeth	?
Spouse(s)	Anna Rowland	Anna Rowland
Marriage	17 Jan 1802	17 Jan 1802

Where there is so much confusion identifying our William due to the prevalence of his name among dozens of others, and Anna is equally as common, how can we be sure that this will belongs to our William?

Within the body of the document, several other references make it clear that this document belongs to our William. At the onset, the mention of a Jonathan Tillotson points to this being the correct family as this person is Anna's brother-in-law and performed the role of executor.

Based on a probate date of 17 January 1825, William Bowen very likely died in 1824.  It is very easy to miss the document within the Topsham files because the label on the front refers to Samuel Bowen even though the actual title names Wm. Bowen.

William's Lineage:

Uncle Enoch?

With details as clear as mud, at the very least we now know that William did die prior to 17 January 1825. We're left with a lack of information on the identity of William's parents though. Since there appeared to be no additional information on William, every Bowen within the Corinth and Topsham record catalogs was reviewed and ultimately an Enoch Bowen’s custodial record was located.  Enoch Bowen was apparently “old and infirm” and was also described as “deranged.”  William claims custody of Enoch in a letter to the town board and outright states that he is Enoch’s brother.

Prior to this find, Enoch's parents, Peter Bowen and Sarah "Sally" Silloway were already contenders since they were the right age to have been William's parents and Corinth was still a budding township at the time of his birth. William settles his relationship with Enoch for the reader clearly in Enoch's custodial record:

Enoch’s parents are established as Peter Bowen and Sarah “Sally” Silloway.  Most of their children, including Enoch, were born in Merrimack, NH, where birth registrations were in place by the time Enoch was born.  Enoch was buried with his parents and is memorialized on a 12' monument with them.

Because the identity of Enoch’s parents is known, and we know that William is Enoch’s brother, it is fair to assume through indirect means that Peter and Sarah are William’s parents (Sarah did not marry anyone else while she was married to Peter so we can derive that she is the mother of all of his children), so why is there no birth record for William?

Peter and Sarah moved to Corinth after their daughter, Hannah, was born in 1768, but before Elizabeth was born in 1776.  Given the date spans for the rest of their children, with another child (Peter) born in 1778, William was either born between 1770 and 1775, or after 1779 – likely the former since his mother was born in circa 1735.  There are no birth records for William, Elizabeth, or Peter, but their birth locations are found on their children’s death records.  There may also be another child named Taplin, but there is no definitive proof on him.

DNA as Evidence

Since there remains no primary source identified which states that Peter and Sarah are William’s parents, DNA becomes an ancillary source to identify connections to Peter and Sarah.  Ancestry already had my DNA at this point, so I figured that since William is my 4th great grandfather I could assign Peter and Sarah as his parents and there would be True Lines® matches if he is their son.

However, since all of the other matches to William have him linked to the erroneous William Bradford Bowen, they don’t appear under Peter.  The links to Peter also don’t appear under William.  Both families don’t seem to know about the link between them…until now.  😊  Living DNA matches have been hidden to protect their identity.

This table shows that there are three distant cousins under Peter. The living ones are cropped.

This table shows that there are another three distant cousins under William. The living ones are cropped.

Additional Sources:

William Bowen’s daughter, Hannah(2) (there were two Hannahs) has William’s place of birth listed as Corinth on her death record, and I believe, based on all of the above, that this is accurate.  It is a later dated record, is accurate based on spelling and location names, and in typeface where the others are copied from older records.

	Old	New
Name	William Bradford Bowen	William Bowen
Born	29 May 1781.  Coventry, CT	1770-1775 or 1780. Corinth, VT
Died	27 Feb 1835.  Orange County, VT	About 1824.  Topsham, VT
Parents	Christopher Bowen and Elizabeth	Peter Bowen and Sarah Silloway
Spouse(s)	Anna Rowland	Anna Rowland
Marriage	17 Jan 1802	17 Jan 1802

Discrepancies:

• Hilas Bowen’s death record: his mother’s name is listed as Mary, but he does have matching DNA so I believe that it is a typo.  Anna Bowen’s will lists Hilas as her executor which supports him being her son.

• Julia Bowen’s death record: lists William’s place of birth as Connecticut.  This may have been the root of the problem all along.  Since both William and Anna were deceased at the time of Julia’s death, it’s possible that the coroner did not have the information and filed it incorrectly.

Next Steps

I continue to dig for records for William.  The Historical Societies in Corinth and Topsham have no additional information on William.  He appears on the census repeatedly next to Peter Bowen Jr. who is a documented son of Peter Bowen Sr. and Sarah Silloway.  Meanwhile, Peter Bowen and his brother, John Bowen, moved from Salisbury, NH to Corinth, VT some time around 1776.  John is the son of John (AKA Anthony) Bowen who migrated from England in the mid 1700s which matches with the established records of the immigrants of the area at that time.

Update:

About two years after the first version of this essay was written, my sister and I began our work in gravestone restoration and cleaning.  It is a labor of love for us.  On my birthday in 2023, I visited Corinth and Topsham, VT, and with the permission of the cemetery commissioner in Corinth, brought my cleaning supplies in order to clean Peter and Sally Bowen’s monument.  I didn't realize how tall it was before making the trip! A pleasant surprise was waiting for me in the left hand corner of their plot. 

One of the more difficult to read stones that I’ve worked with, William’s stone was caked with impermeable lichen and etched to a point where the underlying red-tinted stone beneath the outer gray stone is visible in places.  At first glance, this appears to be a coating on the stone, but unfortunately it comes through in places where the outer layer of the stone has worn away. 

To obtain a somewhat readable photo of William’s name and date of death, I took the photo while the marker was lathered in D2 and rinsed it off afterward.  A year later, when I visited the graveyard again on Mother’s Day in 2024, not much improvement was seen.  D2 usually does its work in that time but it only made it apparent that there was no further lichen to remove and the many colors present were actually due to stone layers that had worn away.

William Bowen died on 26 Dec 1824.  This aligns with the probate date of his will.

In the end, the Bowens left behind more than just land and census records—they left a legacy woven into the history of Corinth. While we can’t summon them by saying their names three times, their story is still very much alive.

About the Bowen Family:

Before I say what I have to say in this section, I have to express that I'm not being facetious. Mental health is a top priority and past generations did not have the resources that we have today. The pattern of mental illness that jumps off the screen when learning about this family is unsettling. While it's common to unearth family knowledge that was not intended for the public when performing this type of research, the Bowens go several levels beyond that. If you are finding any similarities with their trends, please visit our Resources page and seek help.

• Peter Bowen - in 1753, along with Salisbury resident John Morrill, killed two native Americans named Plausawa and Sabbatis who had allegedly been creating a nuisance in the area of Salisbury, NH, and then buried their bodies under a bridge. Facts are unclear. Peter also shot out his own eye during a training exercise during The French and Indian War and then petitioned the government for a pension. The History of Salisbury, NH reports that he disappeared and no one knows what happened to him. I supposed it is easier to track a family down electronically, nearly 300 years later.

• Guy Bowen(1) - after one marriage ended in divorce which was highly uncommon in his day, Guy married a second time only to lose his wife to illness in her early 40s. A third marriage also ended in divorce after Guy disappeared shortly after their wedding, leaving his wife to live in another family's home and keep house for them. After the second divorce, he followed a son from his first marriage to East Bolton, Quebec despite not knowing a soul there.

• Clarence Bowen - Faked his own death after his wife died from the after effects of a pregnancy termination. National news sources reported that he had hung himself although there was no municipal death record. He remarried a few years later. Later sold his 13 year old daughter for a bushel of corn to a man 28 years her senior who was also her step grandfather. She divorced him for the cause of 'extreme cruelty.'

• Guy Bowen(2) - married a woman with two children because it was illegal to be an unmarried woman with children at that time. His motivation for marrying her was unknown but love was not a factor and his wife belligerently announced it every chance she got. Was ultimately thrown out by his wife and died while they were separated. She married a former Turkish boarder who lived with them and they lived happily ever after until he passed away decades later. She lived to be 102.

These are the Bowen men in my direct line, but as I was researching them story after story arose where they were engaging in activities that spoke to extreme dysfunction. Murder, suicide, criminal activity, and just overall treating others in ways that are less than human came across as a theme. I'm hopeful that this was a temporary trend that ended with my great grandfather.

What's next?

The History of Salisbury refers to Punch Brook with the following narrative:

I've always thought of punch as more than watered down rum. Maybe I'll have to pull out the still again (outdoors this time) and make some rum. Wigwag punch (with more than rum and water) could be a fun new concoction and a tribute to the Bowens...or their wives...or the Natives they had such a great relationship with.

If the Bowens had been around when Beetlejuice was filmed, they might have seen it as a comedy or perhaps as something more familiar. In the film, the dead remain trapped in their own limbo until they confront their circumstances—something that proves far more difficult than expected. Humans also exist in a realm of our own making, bound not by supernatural forces, but by an inability to acknowledge what is so clear to those looking in from the outside.

Unlike the ghosts in Beetlejuice who eventually find a way to cross over, it's vital that we avoid remaining content to stay exactly where we are. Unfortunately, some hauntings have nothing to do with the dead.