The Bodwell Family Mysteries

Two Bodwells arrived in San Francisco aboard the steamer Monumental City on March 4, 1852 — nine months before Lorenzo Bodwell's own arrival on the Golden Gate (his story, now solved, is below). Kin who went ahead to scout the goldfields, or an entirely unconnected pair of Bodwells swept up in the same rush? No one has traced them further.

George W. Bodwell is said to have shared in the reward money paid out for the 1865 capture of Confederate president Jefferson Davis near Irwinville, Georgia. The capture, the $100,000 reward, and the bitter dispute over how it was divided between the 4th Michigan and 1st Wisconsin cavalries are all extensively documented — but George W. Bodwell's own name, and what he did with his cut, hasn't turned up in any of the surviving claim records searched so far.

Bailey Bodwell served in the War of 1812 and was, at some point, brought up on court-martial charges by some of his own men. What the charges actually were has never been recorded anywhere the family has found.

Philyar A. Bodwell is recorded fighting in the Oregon Rogue River War of 1856. Is "Philyar" short for "Philander," or is the whole name simply a misreading of mid-19th-century cursive that actually says Charles Augustus Bodwell — who we know separately went west for the Gold Rush?

He founded a bank, then walked away from it for Florida — family tradition says abruptly, possibly tied to a financial panic. No specific panic, or specific reason, has ever been confirmed.

Repeated family notes claim Sarah Jane Bodwell was an important influence on Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science. Eddy's own well-documented biography doesn't mention a Bodwell by name anywhere easily searchable — so either the connection is real but obscure, or it's a claim that's drifted from a different, unrelated Sarah Jane somewhere along the way.

A name change, mid-childhood, with no explanation recorded — the kind of decision that would have meant something significant to the family at the time and means nothing at all to us now.

Possibly the smallest mystery on this entire list, and possibly the most human one — everyone in a family remembers a relative's odd, specific fear, and almost no one remembers why.

New detail: The tree now preserves the story behind the fear. During the Depression, Noble Irwin Bodwell (1898–1962) waited at the quarry gate in Winterset, Iowa, until he got a job. Rattlesnakes didn't bother him at all, but bees terrified him. When a co-worker slipped a bee into Noble's lunch pail, the joker found a rattlesnake in his own the next day. We know how afraid he was; we still don't know why. See Radios, Reels and Hard Times.

Family tradition holds that in 1729 a Native American planted the elm at the Bodwell homestead as a gesture of goodwill toward the family — the same family whose patriarch, Henry Bodwell, had a reputation as a formidable and combative presence on that stretch of river. Was this a genuine reconciliation, payment for a specific favor, or does the story conflate two different relationships that have blurred together over three centuries of retelling?

The family's own records cite The Essex Antiquarian for the claim that Priscilla, wife of Joshua Bodwell (1736), was "murdered by Indians in Haverhill after 1783." The trouble is the date: organized Indian raids on Massachusetts frontier towns had effectively ended decades before 1783. Either the date is a transcription error somewhere down the line, or this was a different kind of violent incident that got folklorized into an "Indian" story over the generations. Someone would need to go back to the original Essex Antiquarian volume to know for sure.

Family tradition names an "Alexander Bodvel" as the sea captain who possibly robbed young Henry before indenturing him in Massachusetts. Separately, Colonel John Bodvel's contested 1662 will names an "Alexander Bodvel" as father of the infant beneficiary Thomas Bodvel — in the very same decade. Same man moving in the same small circle of relatives, or two different Alexanders merged by a century of retelling?

The infant son of that same Alexander Bodvel, named a beneficiary in Colonel John Bodvel's will before the whole document was overturned by Act of Parliament in 1666 — did he grow up with any inheritance at all, and does his line survive anywhere in the records?

The family's own account says the ship that carried Henry to America was owned by "Lord Newbury," and that Henry's stepfather may have been his brother. No English peerage by that exact name turns up easily. Is this a garbled memory of a real title — Newborough, perhaps, the same family that later held Bardsey Island — or has the name simply migrated over from Newburyport, Massachusetts, where Henry actually came ashore?

The carved heraldic stone Eileen and Greg Ball photographed in 2006 is treated as ancient evidence of the family arms. Was it carved contemporaneously with the arms' medieval origin, or is it an 18th- or 19th-century antiquarian addition, as so many "ancient" heraldic church stones in Wales turned out to be on closer inspection?

An 18th-century room at Bodvel Hall has painted panelling showing an imagined tropical scene — palm-like trees, exotic animals. Commissioned to reflect the family's West Indies trading ventures, or just an unrelated decorative fashion of the period?

A carved wooden mantle shaped like the house, along with period postcards, were said to be held by the Lawrence Public Library after the house's 1957 demolition. Are they still cataloged and viewable today, or have they gone the way of the house and the elm itself?

Bodwell Terrace in Millburn, New Jersey is "most likely" named for him — but who was he, and what took a Bodwell to New Jersey in the first place?

An uncited Wikipedia infobox names Canadian MP Garth Turner as the great-grandson of 19th-century Canadian MP Ebenezer Vining Bodwell. When this claim was checked against Ebenezer's known children and Turner's known parentage, no supporting connection could be confirmed. Genuinely true but poorly documented, or a claim that shouldn't have been made in the first place?

New lead: This one may now be answerable. A 2023 book by historian George Emery and Debbie Kasman, The Bodwells of Elgin Hall: Mount Elgin Hamlet, Dereham Township, Oxford County, 1848–2023, describes Elgin Hall as Garth Turner's ancestral home and traces the descendants of James Bodwell Sr. (1764–1853), the family's pioneer in Dereham Township. Turner himself was the patron of the campaign to save the house. The book should settle whether the line really runs through Ebenezer Vining Bodwell, and if so, through which of his children.

Before the Essex Company bought the site in 1845, other families worked that stretch of the Merrimack too. Was "Bodwell's Falls" simply the settled local name by then, or did it edge out a rival name somewhere along the way?

The family tree records a Charles A. Bodwell born in Guatemala in 1912, but gives no date or place of death. The timing fits the family's story: a 1912 history of American Friends' (Quaker) foreign missions places his father, his mother and two children, Charles and his brother Sperry, in Guatemala that year. Sperry's story has an ending, since he died in 1923. Charles's doesn't. After 1912 he disappears from every record the family has found.

Missionary families of that era often lost small children in the field, and a baby's death far from home could easily go unrecorded in American sources. But if Charles lived, he ought to turn up somewhere: on a passenger list sailing home from Central America, in the 1920, 1930 or 1940 U.S. census, in the 1940 draft registration, or in the Social Security Death Index. Sperry's 1923 death notice might also name his surviving siblings. Did Charles die as an infant in Guatemala, grow up using his middle name, or stay on in Central America when the rest of the family came home?

Now partly answered: The family's Lakeville branch is confirmed. A newspaper clipping in the tree, from the Marin Journal of August 9, 1923, reports that Sperry Augustus Bodwell, son of Mr. and Mrs. C. A. Bodwell of Lakeville, Sonoma County, and a student at the Mount Tamalpais Military Academy, drowned the day before when he fell from a high bank into Yosemite Lake in Stockton while visiting relatives with his mother. The paper called him a grandson of the late Austin Sperry, founder of the Sperry Flour Mills, and noted that his father had once run for Congress. So Charles A. (1912) and Sperry were the sons of Charles Augustus "Gus" Bodwell Jr. and Beda Sperry, and grandsons of the Gold Rush pioneer who founded Lakeville. What still isn't known is what took the family to Guatemala in 1912, and what became of Charles. As the elder son of a prominent Sonoma County family, he should be findable in Sonoma County records, the 1920–1940 censuses, or his mother's 1949 sale of the Lakeville home.

Henry Bodwell (1729–1816), grandson of the first Henry, was captain of the Eleventh Company of the Essex County militia in 1779 and lived in the old homestead. His gravestone reportedly gives him two dates of death, April 2 and April 9, 1816. Was the stone cut in error and corrected, did it confuse his date of death with his burial, or is one date for someone else entirely? The Methuen town record of deaths and the church burial register should say which is right.

Young Eliphalet Bodwell (born 1738) was among the defenders of Fort William Henry on Lake George when it surrendered to Montcalm in August 1757, while his father James was with the force sent to relieve the siege. After the surrender, France's Native allies attacked the retreating column. The killing was later exaggerated in reports and in The Last of the Mohicans, but it was real, and many more prisoners were carried off and later ransomed. Eighteen years later Eliphalet was fighting at Bunker Hill, so he clearly survived. Did he make it through to Fort Edward with the column, or was he captured and held in Canada? The surrender terms also barred the garrison from serving again for 18 months. Did he keep that parole, or turn up in another muster roll too soon?

The family already knows Celsius Putnam Bodwell (1854) was the "masked Texas Ranger" of family tradition, and the Texas Rangers Museum in Waco has material on his part in breaking up Sam Bass's gang in 1878. But the "Bass War" had two halves. From April 1878 Junius Peak raised a special detachment around Dallas that hunted the gang across North Texas. Then in July, Major John B. Jones set the trap at Round Rock, where Bass was shot and died two days later. Which half was Celsius in? Did he ride with Peak's men, or was he one of the handful of Rangers in the street at Round Rock on July 19?

In November 1998 the site announced that the father of Solomon Bodwell (1780) had finally been identified. The evidence came from a Spanish priest's record, sent in by Colleen Hendry Smith. The site's editor accepted it, but the family compiler, Geoffrey Bodwell, openly had his doubts. What was the record, and where was it made? A Spanish-language church record for a New England family is unusual enough to need explaining. Does the identification hold up when checked against New England records?

The site holds a letter Joseph Albert Bodwell (1850) wrote to his wife from Mexico around 1883. The early 1880s were boom years for Americans in Mexico, with railroads, mines and land companies pushing south from the border. What took him there, where exactly was he, and did he ever bring the family with him?

New detail: Paul Garvin Bodwell's tree entry describes how it was made. He hated raking leaves, so in the mid-1950s he rebuilt the chassis of a petrol lawn mower and fitted a homemade bag, creating what the family believes may have been the first powered leaf sweeper. That dates the invention; whether he ever patented or sold it is still open.

The site has a photo of Paul G. Bodwell Sr. (1885) with his own invention, the "Leaf Pickerupper." Did he ever file a patent, sell any, or was it a one-off for his own yard? An inventor search on Google Patents is an easy first check. Patents from before 1920 are only partly searchable by name, though, so the result may still need a look at the scanned Patent Office gazettes.

The pioneer Charles Augustus Bodwell (the same man who reached the gold fields in 1849) settled at Lakeville in Sonoma County. According to a 1949 newspaper account, the Lakeville post office stood on his 260-acre property. Riverboats tied up at "Bodwell Landing," and the old 10-room house was one of the oldest in the district. It left the family in 1949. Does the house still stand? Does "Bodwell Landing" survive on any map? And where did the old post office building end up, since it was moved to a neighboring ranch?

Howard Lionel Bodwell, DSO, CMG, the most decorated Bodwell of the First World War, died of influenza and his wounds on January 15, 1919, on his way home. The family tree says he died at Saint John, New Brunswick. The Canadian Virtual War Memorial records his death in Vancouver, where he is buried. Did he die on the voyage or train and was the body sent west, or is one record simply wrong? His service file at Library and Archives Canada should settle it. See Over There.

Jared Fletcher Bodwell of the Mount Elgin family, a former Mountie farming in Alberta, died on October 14, 1918, with the 31st Battalion, and is buried at Duisans British Cemetery near Arras, a cemetery that grew up beside field hospitals. Was he killed in action, did he die of wounds, or was he one of the many soldiers taken by influenza that autumn? His digitised service file at Library and Archives Canada will say.

The identity discs of Charles Herbert Bodwell (1888–1939) are stamped with his name, "2nd Lieut.," "M.T.C." (Motor Transport Corps), the letters "R.U." and a number. The family remembers him as an ambulance driver. "R.U." may stand for a Repair Unit of the Motor Transport Corps. Which unit was he in, and did he begin as a driver and finish as an officer? See Over There.

When Russell Seavy Bodwell's B-17 was shot down over Denmark in February 1945, two Danish civilians found him and his top turret gunner and handed them to the Resistance, who smuggled them to Copenhagen and on to Sweden by fishing boat. Their names are not recorded in the tree. Danish resistance archives and the American escape-and-evasion reports kept for every airman who made it home may name them. See Wings and Wounds.

Martin Van Buren Bodwell (1840–1903) served in the 22nd Maine Infantry, but he is also listed in the 20th Maine, the regiment made famous by its defence of Little Round Top. Family tradition says cannon fire left him deaf. Was he on Little Round Top on July 2, 1863, or did he join the 20th later?

The tree gives Ebenezer Bodwell a death year of 1868, but a local history says he drew his War of 1812 pension until his death in 1876. It also says he was wounded at Chateauguay, while his surgeon's certificate names the fight at "Ormstown" in October 1813. And when he had been married fifty years, he had reportedly moved fifty-one times. His pension file at the National Archives should resolve the dates.

Augustus Bodwell (1901–1974) installed the first permanent radio transmitter in the U.S. Capitol in 1924 and later won the Washington police department's Silver Medal of Valor. In the late 1940s he taught himself to use motion-picture equipment and travelled west to film Hopi people and Western scenery. Are those reels still in the family, or in an archive?

In 1885 John Damon Bodwell (1840–1888) was granted a patent for a device to burn liquid fuel, an early way of firing furnaces with crude petroleum. He became president of a company in the East Bay, and was found dead on its land in 1888 in circumstances the newspapers did not fully explain. What was the company, did his invention work, and what happened to it after his death?

Several notes in the tree describe photographs that came from the old Bodwell website, such as Clyde Bodwell standing in his Lebanon, Nebraska, store before the 1904 fire, and Earl Alvin Bodwell's family "courtesy of Nona Larson." The pictures themselves are not in the tree's media. If anyone has copies of the old site's image files, or of the original photographs, please get in touch.