Childhood Of James Bowie

Around South County: 2 churches work together for children in need

When Ingrid Quimby's 9-year-old son Nathaniel worried that one of his friends wasn't getting enough to eat once the school programs shut down for the summer, they came up with a simple plan - a breakfast club.

In 2010, Nathaniel and his younger brother Gabriel - both students at Tracey's Elementary School - started the program at Cedar Grove United Methodist Church in Deale. The goal of the club is to provide a breakfast meal during the summer months to children who typically rely on the free or reduced-fee meal programs at school.

There was minimal initial interest at first because of the lack of transport in the area. Cedar Grove quickly reached out to two area mobile home parks. After the summer ended, their desire was to increase the number of breakfasts served in 2011.

In November 2010, Ingrid met Ann Herche from Mt. Zion United Methodist Church, when they both attended the Southern Maryland Faith-Based Hunger Summit sponsored by Gov. Martin O'Malley's Office for Children and the Maryland State Department of Education, held at Chesapeake Church in Calvert County.

The summit was geared toward faith-based and other community organizations that want to address and end the problem of childhood hunger in Maryland, most specifically Maryland's southern counties of Anne Arundel, Calvert, Charles and St. Mary's. When Ingrid and Ann met, they shared the vision, and both churches committed to work together to meet the needs of children in southern Anne Arundel County.

This spring, Ingrid and Ann joined forces to coordinate the Breakfast Club Ministry with the backing and commitment of Cedar Grove and Mt. Zion churches. This summer bagged breakfast meals are transported five days a week to Lyons Creek Estates, Rio Vista Plaza and Patuxent Mobile Estates. Volunteers from both Cedar Grove and Mt. Zion are scheduled on a daily basis to deliver the meals to each site.

At this time, they are distributing around 170 meals a day.

Every morning at 7:50 a.m., members from Mt. Zion and Cedar Grove, along with several adults in the community, load the boxes, tubs and coolers of food into their vehicles and head out to the sites. Often children and parents are waiting for them when they arrive at 8:30 a.m. The bagged meals are distributed within half an hour.

There is a "menu" for each of the five days. Meals always include some type of fresh fruit, milk and juice, along with a variety of items such as cereal, Pop-Tarts, cereal bars, granola bars, yogurt, string cheese, fruit cups and applesauce cups, muffins, etc. Additional donated items such as peanut butter and jelly, large boxes of cereal, cans of fruit, boxes of oatmeal, even some canned and fresh vegetables have been distributed.

"Early Life in the Southwest--the Bowies"

The following article on James Bowie was written by his oldest brother, John Jones Bowie , (1785-1859). Titled "Early Life in the Southwest--The Bowies," it was published in De Bow's Review of the Southern and Western States (1852). While it contains numerous errors as far as names, most of which I have corrected in brackets, it remains one of the few authentic sources we have on the Bowie family. My father and mother were both born in the state of Georgia. They were married in 1782 in the county of Burke of the same state; my mother's maiden name being Elvira Jones; my father's name was Rezin Bowie. During my infancy, or about the year 1787, my parents moved from Georgia to the state of Tennessee, where they remained for six or seven years. During this sojourn my father had frequent skirmishes with the Indians, and was engaged in the conflicts then so common in that devoted country. After this he removed to Logan county, Kentucky, where my brother James was born in the spring of 1796. My father was passionately fond of the adventures and excitements of a woodsman's life, and as the country improved and opened, population increased, and the refinements of civilization encroached upon the freedom of his hunting-grounds, he retired to wilder regions, where he could enjoy those sports and stirring adventures peculiar to a frontier life. In the year 1800 he removed to the state, or rather province of Missouri, and in 1802 he came and settled on the Bushley Bayou, in what was then the district of Rapides, Louisiana, and under Spanish rule. Here he remained till 1809, when he again, and for the last time, took up the line of march, and finally settled in the district of Opelousas, where he remained until he died, in 1819, in the fall of the year. He sleeps with the common mother Earth, without any stone or inscription to mark the resting-place of him whose bosom was so often bared, and whose hand was so often raised for the defence of his family, and the homes and firesides of his countrymen, against the secret and deadly attacks of savage foes. At his death he left four sons, myself being the eldest, Rezin, James and Stephen, and two daughters. [The Bowies had ten children, but only six were still alive at the time of their father's death.

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De Bow's review of the southern and western states

De Bow's review