nces,
added a new flavor to the life of Cooperstown.

Eight children born to Mr. and Mrs. Bowers at Lakelands were girls. The
father's hopeful anticipations were so well known in the community that
when a son and heir, Henry J. Bowers, was born at last, in 1824, the
event was signalized by the ringing of the village church bells in
Cooperstown, the only birthday in the region that was ever honored by
such a demonstration.

John Myer Bowers, in his later years, was far from being the Beau
Brummel of his youthful days in New York, and came to be known in the
village as a distinct character, ruggedly determined not to yield to the
infirmities of old age. When his physical strength began to fail he kept
a horse constantly in harness and standing at the door of Lakelands that
he might ride to and from the village. This horse, known as "Old Chap,"
was a familiar figure on the road in those days, and faithful to his
master to the advanced age of thirty-seven years.

John M. Bowers died in the year 1846. His widow continued to occupy
Lakelands until her death in 1872, and a daughter, Martha S. Bowers,
continued the occupancy during her life. After the death of the latter
Lakelands was sold in making division of the Bowers estate. Henry J.
Bowers married in 1848 a daughter of William C. Crain, a prominent
citizen of the adjoining county of Herkimer. She was a woman of large
intellectual gifts and undaunted spirit, and personally undertook the
education of their eldest son, John Myer Bowers, who sat on the floor
before her, while the mother, book in hand, instilled into his mind the
importance of the three R's, with much stress upon the principles of
fidelity and loyalty as elements of success in business. At the age of
sixteen years she sent him to New York to study law under one of the
leading attorneys of that city. He became one of the foremost lawyers of
the State, and a few years after its sale repurchased Lakelands, with
its forty acres along lake and river, as his summer home. No native son
of Cooperstown has had a more successful career than John M. Bowers. In
1915 he won a verdict for Theodore Roosevelt in the celebrated trial at
Syracuse in which suit for libel was brought against the former
President of the United States by William Barnes, the proprietor of the
_Albany Evening Journal_.

[Illustration: _C. A. Schneider_

LAKELANDS]

A mansard roof was added to Lakelands at the period during which the
property