October 1988

About this Issue

Note from the Editors

This issue, number 7, celebrates the extraordinary Fowler family: Horace, his wives: Martha Howe, Mary Taylor, and Susan Howe, and his children: Orson, Lorenzo, Charlotte with Martha, and Samuel, Almira, and Edward with Mary. All six were born and raised in Cohocton and all six became outstanding individuals in the last century.

Beginning on the front page is Marion Sauerbier's story of Horace Fowler's family. Mrs. Sauerbier, a long-time resident of Cohocton, and an avid Fowler enthusiast, has collected a lot of information about the Fowlers and their close connection with Phrenology, the theory that the conformation of the braincase indicates the character traits of an animal. In fact, Mrs. Sauerbier is a perceptive observer of heads and at one time as a part of the annual Cohocton Fall Foliage Festival, examined heads and made phrenological readings.

She supplied nearly all of the source material used in this issue which included an early history of Cohocton, an article by Carl Carmer in the Feb. 13, 1937, New Yorker Magazine, clippings, books about octagon houses, and most importantly Madeleine Stern's sympathetic but complete book, Heads & Headlines, The Phrenological Fowlers, University of Oklahoma Press, 1971.

Mrs. Sauerbier also supplied a tenth grade term paper, "History of Cohocton", written by her daughter in 1974. It, too, begins on the front page.

Read Kera's history and the great stories she found from those early times along the Conhocton River around Liberty and Biven's Corners and imagine what living there was like when Horace came in 1806 and married Martha Howe who had come to Prattsburgh in 1807. Pioneering life may have been strenuous but it must have contributed to the marvelous assurance that all of the Fowler children had.

When Horace married Susan Howe in 1835 they moved on to Michigan with the three younger children just before the time that Caroline Kirkland and her husband went to Michigan and founded the town of Pinckney.

In this issue, Chapter 10 of Mrs. Kirkland's A New Home, published in 1839, tells of her experiences moving with her husband and their children and their possesions from Detroit to their new town.

The November issue, number 8, will feature the Constitutional debates of 200 years ago. An article, "Local Livestock Marketing History," by John Rezelman will also appear.

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