History of Clarion County, Pennsylvania, 1887



David Bowman Biography

David Bowman was born in Scotland, May 24, 1814. When he was ten years old his father, Thomas Bowman, died, and his mother died one year afterwards. David was one of a family of eight children, all of whom died before the age of maturity, except himself and his brother John, who came to Canada in 1833, where he lived until his death in 1880. David Bowman came to America in the spring of 1834, landing in Quebec, Canada, but went to Pittsburgh the following October. After staying in Pittsburgh about two years he went to Pottsville, Schuylkill county, Pa. While here he married Ellen Robinson, a resident of Pottsville, June 22, 1839, and the following October came to Lucinda Furnace, Clarion county, Pa. He was a coal miner and followed that occupation in Scotland and in America until 1843, when he bought a farm of one hundred acres near Tylersburg, in Farmington township. He dug coal and ore for three years at Beaver Furnace before coming to Tylersburg. After spending some twenty years on his farm he built a store at Newmanville, in Washington township, in 1866. He came to Tylersburg in 1871 and engaged in the mercantile business, which he has followed in that place ever since. In 1873 he, in company with C. Leeper, Porter Haskell, and Daniel Curll, purchased a fourteen-hundred-acre timber lot, known as the Higbee tract, at and around Leeper. After he sold his interest in this tract he bought a one-fourth interest in a seventeen-hundred-acre tract of timber land in Forest county in 1881. He is at present a stockholder and director in the Second National Bank of Clarion. He has lately taken six thousand dollars stock in the Clarion State Normal School, and is one of its trustees. He is now postmaster at Tylersburg, and was the first postmaster at Newmanville, an office established through his influence. He was blessed with a family of thirteen children - ten boys and three girls. Thomas, James C., Frank S., William W., Edward, Charles R., and Jane (Alt), are living at present, most of them near Tylersburg. Mr. Bowman has profited by the adage, "Industry and economy means thrift." When he reached Pittsburgh in 1834 he had but one English sovereign left, was in a strange land with not a relative in this great republic. His excellent judgment and force of character, along with his successful business career, has won for him a prominent place in the community in which he lives.


Source: History of Clarion County; Davis, A. J.; Syracuse, NY; D. Mason and Co., 1887.












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