One reason I love reading about the past is because there are so many inspirational people who faced and overcame challenges.
I recently read about the Calvin and Keziah Bower family that settled in Vermillion, Dakota Territory in 1870. Laura Bower Van Nuys, the youngest of the eight children, memorialized the family in her 1961 autobiography, The Family Band: The Missouri to the Black Hills, 1881-1900.
The young family made a life in Vermillion, but Van Nuys mentions that their family life was defined by before and after the great flood in the spring of 1881. This flood was preceded by The Hard Winter which we think of as The Long Winter because of the novel by another South Dakota Laura (Laura Ingalls Wilder).
However, Van Nuys barely mentions the winter. For her family, it was the spring that was catastrophic. Because of all the extra snow melt and major ice jams on the Missouri and other rivers in the southeast part of the territory, the flooding destroyed much of Vermillion.
The Bower Family escaped with their lives and with some of their belongings, but they had to start life over. They recovered well, and then the oldest child, Rhoda Alice, married a Rapid City newspaper man and joined him out west. A few years later the rest of the family followed her and took a homestead in Custer County.
All of the children were musical, and the seven remaining at home formed a band. While they had their first performance or two in Vermillion, once they moved out west they pursued performance opportunities. They became a popular fixture at parades, Fourth of July celebrations, and other events all over the Black Hills.
They confronted bad weather, poverty, drought, hard work, illness, and death. I was impressed at the family members dedication to their music, their entrepreneurial spirit, their love for each other, their humor, and their resilience and flexibility in the face of hardships.
A fun thing about this family’s story is that Disney made a movie very, very loosely based on the Bowers. Of course the movie was a musical! It was titled The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band, released in 1969, and starred Walter Brennan, Buddy Ebsen, and Lesley Ann Warren, but also included a young Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn.
If you enjoyed reading the Little House books, give The Family Band a try. Although it was written as an adult biography, I think kids twelve and up would enjoy it, too.
Have you heard about the Bower Family? Do you have musicians in your family? How do you practice resilience in adversity?