Effie Bowker Forbes

Found Photo: Effie Bowker Forbes of Massachusetts

Name(s): Effie Bowker
Date: Unknown.  Likely before 1896.
Location: Greenfield, Massachusetts / Bernardston, Massachusetts


The photographer is Albert E. Dunklee, who had studios in Athol and Greenfield, Massachusetts in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Details about Effie's life can be found in "History of the town of Bernardston, Franklin county, Massachusetts. 1736-1900."  Effie Louise Bouker was born in 1869, the daughter of Charles Bowker and Harriet Dawes.  As a young woman, she was a school teacher in her hometown of Bernardston, per the town's annual report in 1890.  In 1896, she married Theodore Charles Forbes.  They settled in Greenfield, Massachusetts and had two sons, Charles Samuel Forbes and Willett Vivian Forbes.  Effie's father-in-law, Charles Pinkney Forbes, was a jeweler and silversmith in Greenfield.  It appears that Effie and her husband Theodore took over his business at a certain point.

Effie's father, Charles, was a medical doctor in Bernardston.  He served as an assistant surgeon  for the Union Army during the Civil War.  Effie had five siblings and half-siblings: Delcet, Alphonzo, Samuel, Arthur and Rose.

Effie died in 1962 at the age of 93.  She is buried in Greenfield, Massachusetts.