View full image ↗Charlie's ancestry
1 September 1860166th Birthday
Mary Rachel Crissman Bowser
Lived 61 yearsMarried 36 years10 childrenConfidence - 10
RelationshipMary is Charlie's second-great-grandmother.
Born on the eve of the Civil War, Mary lost her father in military service and later became the link between the Crissman and Bowser families.
Direct lineage
- Mary Rachel Crissman↓
- Nannie Edith Bowser↓
- Charles “Poose” Franklin Heckman↓
- Renay Charles Heckman↓
- Charles Rene Heckman
Read the full storyClose the full story＋
Mary Rachel Crissman was born in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, on 1 September 1860, the daughter of Michael Crissman and Nancy Jane Hooks. She arrived only months before the Civil War began. In September 1862, her father enlisted in Company G of the 78th Pennsylvania Infantry. He died at Nashville the following February, leaving Nancy a young widow and Mary a small child who would know her father largely through the records his service left behind.
Nancy later married William Henry about 1872, so Mary spent her later childhood in a household headed by a stepfather. Mary then married the widowed Wilson Bowser and became stepmother to his daughter Parmelda. This succession of blended families was common when an early death could quickly reshape a nineteenth-century household.
Mary married Wilson Bowser on 12 November 1885 in West Franklin Township. Their original Armstrong County marriage record is unusually valuable: it names Michael and Nancy Crissman as Mary's parents, gives Mary's age as twenty-five, and records that she had not been married before. The document also corrects an indexing error that places the wedding in December; the handwritten record states November twice.
Wilson and Mary built their household in Armstrong County. Their daughter Nannie Edith Bowser later married John Louis Heckman and became a practical nurse, caregiver, and family historian. Through Nannie, Mary's story became part of the Heckman family line and ultimately Charlie's own ancestry.
