Ancestors

            From the turn off the highway at the red and gold liquor store sign, it’s three miles, winding along a curved macadam road through square, flat fields, to Bowers Beach. You pass a few large farmhouses framed by trees and clusters of aging mobile homes, their battered metal glinting...

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...