Excerpt from The Bowser Family History In preparing a family history such as is undertaken in this work, the writer's first task is to know from what race his fore bears sprang. What native land reared them? What valleys grew golden with their annual harvests? What cities educated their children? What rivers bore upon their bosom their rugged crafts of commerce? What sort of government ruled them? What ideals inspired them with heroic manhood, and lastly, what religious impulses. Moulded their characters and awakened the innate love Of justice and liberty and hatred toward despotism whether of gov ernment or religion? We have a deeper regard for Christian denominations, when we are acquainted with the tyranny and perse cution against which they revolted. In peaceful America where all creeds and names alike are under the same kindly protection Of the state we would little suspect how dearly the pioneers Of these Christian bodies paid for the right to breathe and think and worship God according to their consciences. And there is a soul stirring history back Of these European emigrations to the new world. We think with pride of our heroic ancestors who braved the perils of the sea. And the uncertainties of a life in a wilderness. In a strange land, rather than submit to oppression. We regret that space will not permit us to yield to the inclination to marshal a greater array of the terrific iniquities our brave people suffered across the seas. When the writer began the task of collecting data for this his tory there was no one of our people so far as he could discover who knew from what land the Bowsers emigrated. There was a tradi tion that we came from Germany; others said from Holland, yet others, from France. Following the clue of the first we were happy to discover the truth. It seemed most reasonable to begin with the language. A people's language would, it would seem obvious, be a direct index to their nationality. If, for example, an emigrant came to America speaking the Welsh language we would rightly conclude he came from Wales. That our people were not Hollanders was evident because they did not speak Dutch. They were not French for the same reason; and if from Germany, cer tainly not from the North German states. The people Of Europe. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.