A Statement on the History of Oden Bowie as a Slaveholder

ODEN BOWIE WAS BORN Nov. 10, 1826 at his family’s Prince George’s County plantation, Fairview, in present-day Bowie, Maryland.  Built in the 1780s, at the time, Fairview was home Oden’s parents, Col. William Duckett Bowie (1803 - 1873) and his wife Mary Eliza Oden (d.1849).  William D. Bowie and Mary Eliza Bowie were married in 1825 at Bellefield, another Bowie family plantation in Prince George’s County.  Along with being a productive planter, Oden’s father, William D. Bowie, served in the House of Delegates in the 1830s and 1840s.  And, along with other relatives, including eldest son, Oden, built Baltimore and Potomac Railroad. 

A few years after Oden’s mother died (1849), his father William D. Bowie remarried – to his half-sister-in-law.  William then removed to Croom in southeastern Prince George’s County at his other plantation “Bellefield,” conveying ownership of Fairview to his son, Oden.  There, Oden Bowie began to establish himself as a planter in his own right.  In 1851, Oden Bowie married Alice Carter, granddaughter of George Calvert of Riversdale. 

 The Bowies of Bellefield and Fairview were among the counties (indeed the state’s) largest slaveholders.  Growing tobacco, Oden’s father, William D. Bowie (sometimes known as “Colonel” because an affiliation with militia) increased his holdings from 42 enslaved persons held in 1830 to 93 by 1860.  Thus, Oden Bowie had always known slavery and came to be a large holder of enslaved persons once he assumed control of Fairview.  His 47 enslaved blacks placed him in the top 40 slaveholders for Prince George’s County in 1850 (out of a total slaveholding population of 879).  During the next decade he more than doubled his slaveholdings, with 103 counted by 1860.  He went on to serve as Governor of Maryland (1869-1872).  He died at 1894, and was buried at Fairview.  Reportedly, at least two former slaves are also buried at Fairview.

 Sources:

PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY LEVY COURT, 1830-1850, (Assessment Record) C1163, MSA

U.S. Census Records for Prince George’s County, 1850, 1860

Effie Gwynn Bowie.  Across the Years In Prince George’s County.  Richmond: Garrett and Massie, 1947.

By David Terry, Research Administrator in the History of Slavery