Benjamin and His Brothers

Click on any photo to see it enlarged.

I first came across this photo (above) a couple years ago among the Shanower family material my cousin Burleigh J. "B.J." Shanower (1889-1985) donated to the Shanower library at the Pioneer Village in Burton, Geauga County, Ohio. Right away I recognized my great-great-grandfather Benjamin Franklin Shanower (1845-1928) standing at the center. I'd seen him only in one other photo without a beard (below left). In most photos he wears a beard. But there's no mistaking him in this photo.

Benjamin Franklin Shanower, with beard, circa 1880.

Benjamin Franklin Shanower, without beard, 1870.

I was pretty sure the figure standing on the left is Ben's brother Nathaniel E. Shanower (1853-1936), the father of B.J. Shanower, whom this photo had once belonged to.

Nathaniel E. Shanower, circa 1900.

But I wasn't sure who the other men could be. The photo has no identifications. Were the others friends? Brothers? Since Ben and Nathaniel were brothers, I thought it likely that the other men were, too. I approached my attempt to identify them with that assumption.

There were five sons in this generational unit of the Shanower family:

1. Benjamin Franklin Shanower, born August 27, 1845
2. Reuben Shanower born August 10, 1847
3. John A. Shanower born March 9, 1851
4. Nathaniel E. Shanower born April 22, 1853
5. William Zachary Shanower born August 23, 1855

But seven men appear in the photo, so they can't all be brothers. If five of them are brothers, then two of them are not. Who are those two? None of them can be their father John Abraham Shanower since he died in 1859 when Ben, the eldest brother, was fourteen years old. Ben is clearly older than fourteen here.

The two extra men are associated closely enough with the Shanower brothers to sit for a formal photograph with them. Could they be brothers-in-law? All five of the Shanower sisters were married:

1. Mary Ann Shanower married Levi Thomas Cecil on May 15, 1870
2. Lydia Shanower married Jacob M. Ebersole on September 12, 1880
3. Elemina "Ellen" Shanower married John E. Smith on January 29, 1871
4. Margaret "Molly" Shanower married Calvin A. Wise on October 26, 1890
5. Clarana "Clara" Shanower married Lester L. Butler on December 25, 1877

That's quite a spread--twenty years--for the Shanower girls' wedding days. Mary Ann and Ellen were both married by early 1871. Clara, the next sister married, was wed in 1877. So if the two extra men are brothers-in-law, the photo was likely shot between January 1871 and December 1877. Ben's lack of a beard indicates a date in the early 1870s. My best guess is that the photo was taken about 1873, give or take a year or two.

If the two extra men are the brothers-in-law of Ben, their names were Levi Cecil and John Smith. But which of the five unidentified figures might they be?

The figure seated on the right doesn't resemble the others. I doubt he was a blood relation. Could he be Levi or John?

I have an album of photos from the mid- to late nineteenth century. The album once belonged to my great-great-grandparents Benjamin Franklin Shanower and his second wife Lucy Leifer Shanower. Most of the photos are unidentified. I recognize Ben's brother Nathaniel and his family in one. I'm sure some of the photos show other siblings of Ben.

Two of them--clearly a paired set, one a portrait of a man, the other a portrait of a woman--are marked "Cecil" in pencil on their backs. Could the man be Levi Cecil? Unfortunately he doesn't resemble anyone in the photo of Ben and six other men.

But are these paired photos really of anyone named Cecil? There are notes on other photos from the mostly unidentified album that are incorrect identifications--one Leifer photo has the name "Shanower" written on it (below). So I strongly question the written "Cecil" identification.

This photo from the mostly unidentified album has a note that reads "Shanower." But it's actually Frederick Leifer, Jr.

In the pair of photos marked "Cecil" (below) the woman seems rather elderly to be Mary Ann Shanower Cecil when the styles of her dress and of the photo are taken into account. She looks suspiciously like Ben's aunt, Rebecca Shanower Kroehle. (Compare her with the 1909 Shanower reunion photo here.) I believe this pair of photos actually depicts Rebecca Shanower Kroehle and her husband Philip Oscar Kroehle, and that whoever wrote "Cecil" on the photos was wrong.

Noted as "Cecil," but it's Rebecca Shanower Kroehle.

Noted as "Cecil," but I think it's Philip Kroehle.

So I had no luck in securely identifying anyone in the original photo as Levi Cecil.

Could I identify the other brother-in-law in 1873, John Smith?

In the album of mostly unidentified photos, there's one (below) that shows a man that looks a lot like the standing figure on the right in the photo of Ben and six other men. In the upper left corner of the album photo are some remnants of writing which could easily be reconstructed as "Smith." The writing seems to be an original identification, not a later guess, since the missing portions were cut off before the photo was mounted to its backing by the photography studio. I believe the writing confirms that the album photo shows John Smith with his wife Ellen Shanower Smith and eldest child Minnie. And his resemblance in the two photos confirms that the photo of Ben and six other men shows John Smith standing on the right.

Ellen Shanower Smith, Clara Minerva "Minnie" Smith O'Donnel Engel Williams, and John E. Smith, circa 1874. Note the remnants of lettering in the upper left corner.

Probably John E. Smith in 1909.

There's a third photo that might show John Smith--the Shanower family reunion photo from 1909--which I wrote about in this previous post (detail on right). Figure 44 looks to me to be the same man as the two other photos. His presence at the Shanower reunion confirms him as a Shanower family member in some respect. I feel pretty secure in identifying him in all three photos as John E. Smith.

If that's John Smith in the photo of Ben and six others, then I'm pretty sure that the photo shows the five Shanower brothers and their two brothers-in-law. I have no way to prove or disprove that the seated man on the right is brother-in-law Levi Cecil. It seems reasonable for the two brothers-in-law to be arranged in the photo on the right side together. So I'm going with the assumption that the seated right-hand figure is Levi Cecil.

Three remaining men are still unidentified. I believe they're the three remaining Shanower brothers. In 1873 they were:

1. Reuben Shanower, age 26
2. John A. Shanower, age 22
3. William Zachary Shanower, age 18

But which is which? Is there any clue in their arrangement in the photo?

Ben, standing center, was the eldest brother. Nathaniel, standing on the left, beside Ben, was the fourth brother. So they don't seem to be arranged by age. I can't think of any other information communicated by their seating order.

Can I find any of them in another photo?

Figure 31 is Nathaniel E. Shanower in 1909. Who is figure 13?

In the 1909 Shanower family reunion photo are two figures that I believe are Ben Shanower's brothers, figures 13 and 31. I believe figure 31 is Nathaniel Shanower, who's already identified in the photo of Ben and his brothers. Since brother William Shanower died in 1903, figure 13 has to be either Reuben or John, but I don't know which. I think figure 13 most closely resembles the figure seated second from left in the photo of Ben and six others. But I can't be sure.

I have another photo (below) that I strongly suspect shows one of these Shanower brothers. The photo, from about 1920, shows Lloyd E. Shanower seated at the upper right and his two young sons, Delmer Lloyd Shanower Fentress standing on the bottom step and Wilbur J. "Mickey" Shanower Fentress sitting just below his father Lloyd.

Lloyd Shanower (upper right) with young sons Delmer and Mickey, circa 1920. And who else?

This photo shows two other people, a woman and a man, both elderly. When I first saw this photo, I thought they must be Reuben Shanower and his wife Lydia A. Karrer Shanower, Lloyd's parents and the grandparents of the two young boys. But Reuben Shanower died in 1912, so this photo can't include him. I assume by extension that the woman isn't Reuben's wife Lydia, though she was alive in 1920.

So who are they?

Lydia Karrer Shanower's sister Elizabeth E. Karrer married John A. Shanower as his second wife. That made Elizabeth the great aunt of the two young boys, Del and Mickey, in two ways--both by marriage and by blood. John Shanower was the boys' great uncle and their father Lloyd's uncle. These relationships made it perfectly reasonable for these people to appear together in a photo. So I think the old couple in this 1920 photo is wife and husband Elizabeth E. Karrer Shanower and John A. Shanower.

Figure 13 in the 1909 Shanower reunion photo is either Reuben or John Shanower. I think figure 13 is not the same as the old man in the 1920 photo of Lloyd Shanower and his two young sons. If my conclusion is correct, figure 13 is not John Shanower. That means figure 13 in the reunion photo is most likely Reuben Shanower and figure 14 is likely Lydia Karrer Shanower. I don't see much resemblance between figure 14 and the woman in the 1920 photo, who I think is Elizabeth Karrer Shanower.

I believe the figure I've identified as John Shanower in the 1920 photo most closely resembles the figure seated on the left in the photo of Ben and his brothers. That leaves Reuben and William as the two remaining brothers.

Can I identify one or the other, thus giving me the identities of both? I'm not sure.

The album of unidentified photos contains a photo (below) with a man that resembles the figure seated second from left.

Is this a Shanower brother and his wife?

There is also a woman in that photo. I assume they're husband and wife and that the photo dates from the time of their marriage, since there are no children included. That woman could be one of two wives:

Who is this?

Lydia Karrer Shanower?

1. Lydia A. Karrer married Reuben Shanower on February 15, 1880
2. Melissa A. Gerber married William Z. Shanower on February 11, 1883

I have one photo identified as Lydia Karrer Shanower (right), but in it she's elderly and the photo's extremely blurry. I'm also not confident that she's Lydia. She might be Lydia's daughter-in-law, Ethel Sheehan Shanower Fentress. In any case, she doesn't look much like the woman in the unidentified album photo.

Figure 14 in the 1909 Shanower family reunion photo might be Lydia Karrer Shanower, especially if figure 13 is Reuben Shanower. I think figure 14 looks a little like the woman in the unidentified album photo.

I have several securely identified photos of Melissa A. Gerber Shanower (below). Melissa had a pretty strong jawline. If I had to guess, I'd say the woman in the unidentified album photo doesn't look much like Melissa. If that guess is correct, then chances are that the man in the album photo is Reuben Shanower.

Three views of Melissa Gerber Shanower--circa 1887, circa 1900, and in 1909.

And I think that man most closely resembles the figure seated second from left in the photo of Ben and brothers. That leaves the figure seated second from right as the only remaining brother, William.

But I'm not sure. I keep changing my guesses.

In any case, my final identifications (for the present) of the men in the photo are:

Standing, left to right: Nathaniel E. Shanower, Benjamin Franklin Shanower, John E. Smith
Seated, left to right: John A. Shanower, Reuben Shanower, William Zachary Shanower, Levi Cecil

Twelve Years Ago Today

Commander Dan Frederic Shanower

It must have been sometime in 1999 that I got a phone call out of the blue from Dan Shanower, someone I’d heard of but never met. He was interested in genealogical information on the Shanower family. At that time I wasn’t particularly interested in my family tree. My mother, however, had done a lot of genealogical research in the 1970s into both her family and my father’s family. I mentioned Mom to him, but Dan had already been in touch with her and they’d exchanged genealogical information.

Dan explained he was in the US Navy and stationed in San Diego, the same town where I lived. He asked me whether I was the Eric Shanower who was a cartoonist. I told him I was. He mentioned that I was the Shanower who surfaced most prominently in internet searches for “Shanower.” That short phone call was the extent of my direct contact with my fourth cousin once removed Dan Frederic Shanower (1961-2001).

Twelve years ago today, on September 11, 2001, airplanes crashed into the two towers of New York City’s World Trade Center and into the Pentagon, headquarters of the US Department of Defense in Washington, DC. By that time Dan Shanower was no longer in San Diego. He was living in Vienna, Virginia, and working at the Pentagon in Naval Intelligence. He was one of the thousands of people killed in that day’s attacks.

I was listening to the radio that morning and heard the reports of the twin towers collapsing. I watched the television footage of people falling through the sky to their deaths and felt sickened like so many others.

But that day I had no idea that Dan Shanower was among those that died. I found out a few days later when fellow cartoonist Brent Anderson saw the name Shanower in a list of the dead and sent me an e-mail message about it.

Then I got a phone call from a local San Diego reporter. I assumed she was calling to interview me about my latest project A Thousand Ships, the first graphic novel in my Age of Bronze series, which had been published a few weeks before. But, no, she wanted to know whether I was related to Dan Shanower. I explained that I was, but I hadn’t really known him. My mother had been in closer contact with him, so I put the reporter in contact with her. Mom ended up sending the reporter a quote from one of the letters she got from Dan, but I don’t remember whether those words were used in a news story about him or not.

The 911 Memorial in Naperville, Illinois.

I saw other news stories about Dan, several featuring his parents Donald Thomas “Don” Shanower (b. 1921) and Patricia Ann “Pat” Gibbs Shanower (b. 1928). Eventually the news reported on a memorial to Dan Shanower being set up in his home town of Naperville, Illinois. In the early years of the last decade the Ozmapolitan Convention, the now-defunct midwest Oz convention, was held annually in Naperville, and I thought I would seek out the Dan Shanower memorial next time I attended. But I never made it to any of the Naperville Ozmapolitan Cons.

I finally visited the memorial about a year ago. It’s located on the riverwalk in downtown Naperville across the river from the public library. The memorial includes a girder from the World Trade Center, rubble from the Pentagon, and Dan's bootprint. A plaque features a photograph of Dan and a quote from a Proceedings Magazine article he wrote concerning four fellow Naval officers who were lost on an airplane mission during 1987’s Operation Earnest Will in the Indian Ocean. Titled “Freedom Isn’t Free,” the article is often quoted in writings about Dan and his death on September 11, 2001. However, I’m not going to quote it here—all the obvious irony has been wrung from it by now. But if you’re interested, you can read the article here.

The Dan Shanower plaque at the Naperville Memorial.

In 2010 I became interested in my family genealogy. My mother turned over most of her genealogical records to me, including her correspondence with Dan. I got in touch with another family historian, Vel Shanower Kirchner, who’d been in close contact with Dan about their researches. Both Vel and Dan were intrigued by the gap in the family line between Jacob Shonauer and Henry Shanower. Dan had dug into the records of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, but like everyone else who’s tried to bridge that gap in the Shanower family, he failed. I’m indebted and grateful to Vel for sending me copies of Dan’s notes. I was glad to read them, since they contained information that I’d never run across before. I would have loved to share with Dan my possible solution to the gap in the Shanower/Shonauer line. But I can’t.

SPAWAR conference room dedication plaque beside door.

Vel Kirchner was also kind enough to put me in touch with Dan’s parents Don and Pat. In fall 2011 they invited me and David along with other local family members to a dedication of a conference room in Dan Shanower’s memory at the headquarters of the US Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) here in San Diego. It’s a high security facility.  To attend the ceremony we had to sign in, wear temporary identification badges, and be escorted each way between the entrance and the room that was being dedicated. The October 14, 2011, dedication of the conference room, which you can read about here, was spearheaded by Dan's friend and colleague Bob Poor.

In the conference room, now named "The Dan,"  I met his parents—my third cousins twice removed Don and Pat—for the first time. I gave Pat the letters my mother had received from Dan. (I kept photocopies, though, so my mom’s research files remain complete.) I also met one of Dan’s brothers, Jon, my fourth cousin once removed, a lawyer and mountain climber. Some of Dan’s colleagues from his time in San Diego and other family members also attended. The ceremony of dedication was tasteful, moving, and seemed short. The whole thing really made me wish I’d followed up that single phone call I had with Dan and gotten to know him better. Okay, so it was a memorial service and of course everyone was saying good things about him. But still, he sounded like a really fun guy.

Friends, colleagues, and family at the Dan Shanower Conference Room dedication.

I admire Don and Pat Shanower, Dan’s parents. This wasn’t the first time Don lost close family in international conflict. His twin brother Paul Frederic Shanower (1921-1945), Bronze Star recipient, died in World War II. Don himself was wounded in World War II and received the Purple Heart. Don, a former college professor whose adventure with a theater ghost I wrote about here, is quiet and doesn’t say much. Pat does most of the talking. But I’ve never known either of them to be publicly bitter or strident about Dan’s death, despite the pain they’ve experienced over it.

Shanower family at the conference room dedication. Left to right: Mary Ann Manley Fentress, Patricia Ann Gibbs Shanower (Dan's mother), Paul Robert Fentress, Eric Shanower, Donald Thomas Shanower (Dan's father), Jonathan Blake Shanower (Dan's brother).

As for me, I don’t want to be bitter or strident either. But I wish more people would remember that it wasn’t just the World Trade Center that was attacked on September 11, 2001. People died in the Pentagon, too. (And in the airplane that went down in Pennsylvania.) I suppose the World Trade Center is more shocking and memorable because there’s more video footage of the airplanes hitting the towers. The towers’ dramatic falls are burned into the retinas of a generation. And they were corporate offices and tourist destinations, not obvious military targets like the Pentagon is.

But the people who died in the Pentagon were just as human as those who died in the World Trade Center. They had loved ones and families, close and distant. I’m a distant relative of Dan Shanower, a man I hardly knew, and the affect his death had on me was in proportion to that distance. Still, he was related to me and that feels personal. Today, on this twelfth anniversary of his death, I want to acknowledge the horrors of armed conflicts between nations, I lament the loss of human life no matter who or where, and I hope for a better future where no one is forced to die violently at the hands of others ever again.

If you want to read more about Dan Shanower on the internet, there’s plenty to choose from. I’m still, as Dan pointed out, the Shanower that surfaces most prominently in internet searches. But he’s a close second. Here are some of the more interesting links to start with:

Dan's grave at Arlington Cemetery, Washington, DC, and articles about his death. 

  

Dan's parents and family remember him.

The Naperville Memorial.

Another article about Dan's death and the memorials.