by Charles W. Bowman
Biographies
CHARLES W. BOWMAN
Charles
Wesley Bowman, editor and proprietor of the Leader, West Las Animas, Colo., was
born near Jackson, Cape Girardeau Co., Mo., February 23, 1840. His parents,
Joshua Bowman and Elizabeth Bowman, nee Spencer, were natives of North Carolina,
and trace their ancestry to one of the London colonies which settled at
Jamestown. Joshua Bowman was the son of Shepherd B., born in Virginia in 1770.
Shepherd's father, named Edward, was born in the same province in 1690, and was
a son of one of the original colonists. About the year 1847, Joshua Bowman
removed with his family to Muscatine, Iowa, and thence, in 1851, to Northwestern
Missouri, where he entered the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church. As a
result, his children had only such educational advantages as could be obtained
from district and private schools while moving about the country from year to
year. These limited advantages were, however, well improved by his five sons. At
the age of seventeen, the subject of this sketch had acquired a pretty thorough
English course, and was considered competent to take charge of a public school,
which he did for a term of three months. About this time his literary bent began
to be manifested in sundry contributions to the local press. His initial attempt
at journalism was a manuscript paper with a head engraved by himself on wood.
This publication had one paid-up subscriber. The labor of printing it with a pen
in small italic letters was too laborious to have justified a larger circulation
at the ruling prices. His next step was to enter the office of the Holt County
News, Oregon, Mo., as printer's devil August 3, 1858. He proved an enthusiast in
the art. In six months, he had advanced to the foremanship, and, at the end of
two and a half years, was made a partner with a new proprietor. He left the
office at the expiration of the usual term of apprenticeship, August 3, 1861, at
which time the war flame began its devastating work. Entering the Union service
on the 7th of October, 1861, he served in the several capacities of private,
Corporal, Hospital Steward, Sergeant Major and First Lieutenant and Adjutant,
till May 18, 1865, when he was honorably discharged, having received, in the
meantime, recommendations from his superiors for further promotion. Returning to
his former home at Oregon, he was enabled, by the kindly aid of the citizens and
the savings from his salary, to start in the newspaper business on his own
account, and, on the 30th of June, 1865, issued the first number of the Holt
County Sentinel. The paper occupied conservative Republican ground and received
a cordial support from all parties September 11, 1865, Mr. Bowman was married to
Miss Nettie G. Morgan, of West Virginia, a graduate of the Academy of the
Visitation, St. Louis. He disposed of his interest in the Sentinel in February,
1869, with a view of establishing a paper at Sedalia, for which inducements had
been held out to him by prominent citizens of that place. In this enterprise he
was disappointed, and abandoned the undertaking, but not without considerable
loss of time and money, besides being thus thrown entirely out of business. His
next move was to Pleasant Hill. Mo., where he purchased the type and material of
an effete advertising circular called the Journal. Here he established, on the
14th of May, 1869, the Pleasant Hill Leader. This proved a prosperous venture
for a time, but the trade of the place began, after a year or so, to decline and
it soon became apparent that there were too many newspapers in the county. In
1870, Mrs. Bowman was taken with consumption, which resulted in her death
February 3, 1871. The personal care of three children was thus added to that of
an expensive printing office. His domestic calamities, together with the decline
of business, compelled Mr. Bowman to look for a new location for his office.
This he found at Las Animas, Colo., where he removed his press in the spring of
1873, and began the publication of the Las Animas Leader. The paper was removed
to West Las Animas in February, 1874, where it is now published. The notable
features of Mr. Bowman's editorial career have been the advocacy of advanced
ideas politically, socially and industrially; war against dishonest
administration of local affairs, and the exposure of land-grabbing rings. He is
precise to a fault in his writing, even upon the most trivial matters. His paper
is characteristically neat in appearance, and its matter of a thoroughly moral
tone. In 1875 Mr. Bowman was appointed Probate Judge for Bent County, to fill an
unexpired term of R.F. Long. In 1876, he was elected School Director in the town
of West Las Animas and served as Secretary of the Board until the spring of
1881. In the fall of 1879, he was elected County Superintendent of schools. In
the Press Association of the State, Mr. Bowman is held in high esteem by his
brother editors, having served as President of the association from July, 1879,
to July, 1880. He was chosen orator for their annual meeting in 1881, but
circumstances prevented his appearing on that occasion. Aside from his school
duties and constant editorial labors, he finds time to devote many hours of
literary study. For more than two years he has been a member of the Chautauqua
Literary and Scientific Circle, a society which has more than twenty-seven
thousand members throughout the United States and Canada. In addition to all his
other labors, Mr. Bowman has found much pleasure and real enjoyment in his
active Sunday school work, in which he has taken a deep interest during the past
ten years. He is a conscientious student and a hard worker. The names of Mr.
Bowman's three children are Miriam V., born July 29, 1866; Anna Gertrude, born
January 20, 1868; Edna L., born November 13, 1869. Anna Gertrude was adopted,
after her mother's death, by Mr. and Mrs. J.E. Black of Sabetha, Kan., and died
January 18, 1880.
