My maternal great-grandmother, “Grandmom Martin” (1882-1974), was the first of my ancestors to settle in the small bayside town of Bowers Beach, Delaware. But it wasn’t by choice. Alice Pauline Anderson, born in Philadelphia, lost her mother when she was about six years old. I was told when I was young that she was an orphan who was sent to Bowers Beach to a well-to-do family to be a servant. It was only recently that I heard a darker version of that story. My cousins were told that her brother was with her when she got on the train from Philadelphia to Bowers Beach. Her brother was somehow lost on the way, and the family was never able to find him. Attempts have been made to trace him, but no one has succeeded. I am wondering now if the recent advances in DNA genealogy might be able to solve the mystery. Census records show that she was living with the Hubbard family in Bowers Beach as a servant when she was 17. I don’t know if that was the same family that first received her.
Alice married Samuel Martin, a local waterman, and raised a large family in a tiny house on a Bowers Beach side street. One of her children was my mother’s mother, Mary Elizabeth Martin.
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