William Bowen (b. circa 1801 - d. circa 1878)
MSA SC 5496-036615
Land Owner, 5th District, Montgomery County, Maryland
Biography:
William J. Bowen was a free black landowner in Montgomery County, Maryland. Bowen, a free born mulatto, was born about 1801 in Maryland and is believed, through oral history, to be the son of Syrus Bowen and an unnamed white woman. Bowen worked as a post and railer, building fences. William Bowen lived in Ashton, a small community near Sandy Spring, with his wife Julianna, and their eight children in a home near Tilghman Mitchell and Hanson Plummer. The Bowen children were John, George, Cyrus, Rosanna, Jehue, Martha, Anna, and Jarrett. Bowen is also the great grandfather of Lillie Mae Carroll Jackson, who was the grandaughter of Bowen's eldest son John.
William Bowen purchased his first tract of land, called "Reconciliation" from Caleb Bentley of the District of Columbia, for the large sum of $500, on April 28, 1838. Reconciliation like much of the land that was sold to free blacks in this area, was once a part of the tract called Addition to Charley Forrest. In 1851, Bowen purchased another parcel of land, which was a part of Snowden's Manor Enlarged and Addition to Charley Forrest, from Charles G. Porter for the sum of $200. Bowen, a free black, was a slave owner with at least three slaves. He manumitted his three slaves Maria Edwards and her two daughters Juliana, and George Ellen in January 1853.
Despite owning slaves William Bowen, was a religious man who became a Methodist minister at an unknown date. In his will he devised a portion of his land (approximately one and a quarter acre) for the erection of Ebenezer A.M.E. church and burial ground, only if it would be used as a place of worship. William Bowen died around August or September of 1878 in Ashton, Maryland and is probably buried at the Bowen family cemetery located in Ashton. Bowen left all of his land to his eldest son John Bowen for two years after his death. When those two years were past the land was to be divided equally amongst all of his children. Bowens' sons Cyrus and George were named as the executors of his estate.
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