History of Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, 1887



Bowman Family - JAMES WALTON BOWMAN Biography

James Walton Bowman, vice-president of the Bowman-Foresman Company of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and also prominently identified with the ownership and management of various other important industrial and financial interests in that vicinity, is the youngest son of the late Benjamin Carleton and Eliza Ann (Buck) Bowman, and was born in Clearfield county, Pennsylvania, February 16, 1864.

He began his education in the private schools and became a student in Dickinson Seminary, finishing with a business course in Commercial College. Young Bowman was now well advanced in his studies, and capable of entering upon an active career, and he began work in the mill and shops of B. C. Bowman & Company, of which his father was the head and active manager. The other member of the firm, J. H. Rowland, of Port Deposit, Maryland, was associated with Mr. Bowman from the early fifties to the time of his (Mr. Bowman's) death. In 1898 the firm name was changed to that of the Bowman-Foresman Company, in which corporation James W. Bowman was appointed to the position of vice-president. He came to his duties with excellent preparation, being entirely familiar with every detail of the great business in which he had grown up, and with which his family name had been associated from the inception of the enterprise. In addition, Mr. Bowman has long been actively identified with various other manufacturing and financial institutions, some of which owed their founding in large part to the effort of his father. He is a director in the Bowman Lumber Company of St. Albans, West Virginia; secretary and treasurer of the Rowland Land Company of West Virginia; a stockholder in the Saluda River (South Carolina) Lumber Company; the Rishel Furniture Company of Williamsport, Pennsylvania; the McKean Chemical Company and the Lycoming Calcining Company; and is a director in the Susquehanna Trust and Safe Deposit Company. He takes an intelligent and active interest in the affairs of the community, and is particularly interested in educational concerns. At the present time (1905) he is serving his second term as a member of the board of school directors of the city of Williamsport. He is a warm advocate of the principles of the Democratic party. He has attained high rank in the Masonic fraternity.

Mr. Bowman was united in marriage on the 14th of October, 1886, with Miss Harriet Elizabeth Geiger, a native of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, daughter of Andrew and Mary Eva (Mott) Geiger.

Mr. and Mrs. James Walton Bowman are the parents of one child, Helen Eliza Bowman, born December 27, 1889, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.


Source: Genealogical and Personal History of Lycoming County, John W. Jordan, Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1906.










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