In an online group I follow that discusses the Bowen family, someone posed a fun question today:
"if you could have one of your ancestors with this surname join you for
Thanksgiving dinner, which ancestor would you invite? What questions would
you ask him/her?"
This is my reply:
I would invite William Rich Bowen
He was my great grandfather. I never knew him.
He was apparently born in Huntland, Franklin County, Tennessee on April 15, 1859.
Much of his life was spent in the area around Fayetteville, Lincoln County, TN., and later the separated Moore County.
He married a girl named Queen Anne Smith in 1886. They had six children including my grandfather Rawls Coston Bowen.
Rawls eventually moved to North Carolina, eventually settling in Durham, NC.
William Rich and Queen Anne appear to have moved around living with various of their children, including some years in Durham, where Queen Anne died and is buried.
William Rich moved back to TN and lived for some time with a daughter, and later moved to live with a son in Toledo, Ohio, where he died on October 12, 1931 and is buried.
I would love to ask him if he could confirm the ancestry I have for him, or shed some light on this line of Bowens, and how they came to Tennessee.
