Marie’s Notes

My Take

DiVoran Lites

A Story From the Mid-1800s

My grandmother Marie told my Mother Dora everything she could remember about the history of her family. Here is one of the very-short stories. In the mid-1800-s, three generations before my grandmother, Marie Bowers was born, William McElwee came to America from Ireland on a ship. He had red hair. Out of ten children Marie’s family had five redheads and Marie was one of them. I wanted to be a redhead, so I went to beauty school and then I became one.

Paul, the next to the youngest of Marie’s brothers and sisters was one of the redheads. Because William McElwee, (Bill) bore the label of bound-boy, he was probably kidnapped from a big city and placed aboard a ship coming to America. He may have been no older than seven. When he got here he was taken to Illinois to work as a slave. An indentured servant expected to be paid for his work, but bound-boys and bound-girls expected nothing, not even love. He worked off his passage and then worked off his room and board and it took his entire childhood. The man who had bought him had owned a slave and the man who took the money for the voyage grew rich stealing and selling children.

Somehow, Bill overcame it all and became a homesteader and a wealthy horse breeder. One day he and his partner, Harry, who was a known gambler loaded their best stallion, Ace, onto the train and took him to Texas for a sale. The family had heard Bill say he expected to get at least $2,000 for the prize stud, ($60,000 today).

The family waited a long time, but Bill never came home. One day, however, in a nearby town, a relative saw Harry and heard that he had come up with a lot of money. Perhaps no one in the family was able to go after Harry or ask questions. We will never know what happened, but we do know that after Bill was gone, the family still fared well.

DiVoran has been writing for most of her life. Her first attempt at a story was when she was seven years old and her mother got a new typewriter. DiVoran got to use it and when her dad saw her writing he asked what she was writing about. DiVoran answered that she was writing the story of her life. Her dad’s only comment was, “Well, it’s going to be a very short story.” After most of a lifetime of writing and helping other writers, DiVoran finally launched her own dream which was to write a novel of her own. She now has her Florida Springs trilogy and her novel, a Christian Western Romance, Go West available on Amazon. When speaking about her road to publication, she gives thanks to the Lord for all the people who helped her grow and learn.  She says, “I could never have done it by myself, but when I got going everything fell beautifully into place, and I was glad I had started on my dream.”

Tags: Mid 1800s history