Bowman House (1762)

The land, rivers and waterways are integral parts of Wabanaki identity and culture. They connect, feed and sustain the people’s communities. The natural world and its creation are part of Wabanaki celebrations, their rituals, their art and their music, and are at the core of their belief systems. In the late 17^th century, European colonists began coming to Turtle Island (North America) bringing disease and war. By the mid-18^th century, English colonists had forcibly driven the Wabanaki off this land with violence and disease that decimated their population by 96%.

After 1759, the Wabanaki chose survivance and dispersed throughout the state. Their strength enabled them to overcome almost two more centuries of repression and disenfranchisement. Today, the Wabanaki are alive and well. Their culture is recognized, valued and thriving. Today the Wabanaki Alliance in Maine includes the Mi’qmaq Nation, the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, the Passamaquoddy Tribe and the Penobscot Nation.

European wars and political upheaval were the context for more than 150 years of violent conflicts between the Wabanaki and the English (through their colonial government of Massachusetts), a seesaw of long stretches of deadly fighting and periods of uneasy peace. Treaties signed and quickly broken by both sides subjugated the Wabanaki with increasing force. The Wabanaki resisted by raiding homesteads and villages throughout midcoast Maine, killing and capturing colonists. Both sides collected human scalps as trophies. Surviving colonists fled south after periods of raiding but returned in ever-growing numbers each time relative peace returned.

Massachusetts built four forts along the Kennebec River, including Fort Richmond, located at the end of what is now the Dresden/Richmond Bridge and Fort Shirley, built less than a mile from today’s Bowman House. Wabanaki raids on colonists, including one in 1750 on Swan Island just two miles from Dresden, dwindled in number but continued through 1759.

In 1760, the Proprietors paid for prominent Boston architect Gershom Flagg, another Proprietor, to design and oversee the building of the large Pownalborough Courthouse on what had been the site of Fort Shirley. The following year, Flagg designed a home for another Hancock nephew sent north to take care of family business and legal interests, Jonathan Bowman.

After the last raid in 1759, the Wabanaki chose to survive by dispersing throughout the state and continuing their lives, enduring and overcoming centuries of repression and disenfranchisement. Today, the Wabanaki Alliance in Maine includes the Mi’qmaq Nation, the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, the Passamaquoddy Tribe and the Penobscot Nation. The people live on tribal lands and in towns and cities across the State. Each community has its own tribal government, community schools and cultural center. Each manages its respective lands and natural resources. The Wabanaki culture is alive and well. The People of the First Light will always be an integral part of Maine.

Larger and more imposing than most of the houses nearby, the architectural style of the house is unadorned Georgian. Bowman furnished it with exquisite Chippendale-style furniture, Chinese export porcelain, and imported silver and glassware, creating a world of beauty and elegance far away from the rough reality and challenges of life on the Maine frontier. Receipts show that he continued buying for the house right up to his death.

In 1770, Jonathan Bowman married Mary Lowell Emerson, the widow of a ship captain. The family soon grew to include three sons and a daughter. By then, Bowman was Judge of the Courts and Probate, and a power behind most of what went on in the region. He had also grown his participation in shipping, including owning all or part of at least seven international trading ships.

Although it is difficult to imagine today, the Kennebec River was busy with shipping traffic through the early nineteenth century. Bowman ships carried vast amounts of lumber and salted fish down the Kennebec River to Baltimore and other southern ports, Liverpool, Leith, Glasgow, St. Kitts, and Eustatia. The ships brought back sugar, rum, whiskey, wine, coffee, chocolate, spices, linens, silk, cotton, sewing tools, knives, tobacco, tea, snuff, pipes, books, magazines, and manufactured goods.

The Bowmans enslaved at least two Black men, Cicero and Cornelius. We only know of Cornelius from Bowman’s receipts for his labor and clothing. Cicero was enslaved by Mary Bowman’s first husband, Edward Emmerson, sometime in 1765 and brought to their home in Portsmouth. Cicero was about nine years old at the time. After Emmerson’s death, Mary brought Cicero to Pownalborough when she married Jonathan Bowman in 1770.

On November 1, 1775, Cicero self-emancipated. At Bowman House, he would have been present for heated discussions about English tyranny, the rights of men and the need for independence. Bowman and his friends were staunch Patriots and members of the local Committee of Safety. Bowman’s November 6 runaway slave ad vividly describes the twenty-one-year-old young man and says that he left with a rifleman and was assumed to be going to join the army. Reuben Colburn, a Pownalborough neighbor, took the job of slave catcher. Military records show Cicero enlisting in two regiments in the Piscataqua area, the first being disbanded and reorganized. Colburn’s billing to Bowman shows Cicero in the second regiment that travelled to Cambridge, MA  to join up with the Continental Army. Colburn discovered Cicero in Cambridge and returned him to Bowman in January 1776.

The Revolutionary War was a bitter civil war in Pownalborough, with roots in religious feuds as well as politics. Bowman and Cushing were descendants of seventeenth-century Puritan immigrants. Both were staunch Congregationalists who did not want the Anglican church in their community. Their former classmate Anglican Rev. Jacob Bailey was controlled by his patron, the wealthy Sylvester Gardiner.

Gardiner made enemies of Thomas and John Hancock when he used fraudulent legal methods to try to claim land they owned. His machinations ensured that Jonathan Bowman would become an even greater foe. Gardiner and Bailey were Tories. Bowman and (now Sheriff) Cushing, both patriots, became leaders of the Committee of Safety. After Bailey refused to read the Declaration of Independence to his congregation, local fighting intensified. Gardiner and Bailey were forced to flee to Canada. Bowman and Cushing remained in positions of power, with their prewar wealth intact.

Sylvester Gardiner wrote the only known contemporary description of Jonathan Bowman, describing him as tall and striking in appearance, with strong features and silver hair. He particularly noted Bowman’s clothing, described as a full black suit with silk stockings and large glittering shoe buckles.

Mary Bowman died in 1785. In 1798, sixty-three-year-old Bowman married thirty-three-year-old Nancy Goodwin, of the neighboring courthouse family. A condolence letter from Bowman to Nancy on the death of her brother Charles in 1790 shows a friendship well before their marriage. Jonathan Bowman died in 1804. Nancy outlived him by fifty-two years, and it is through her family descendants that Bowman furniture, objects, accounts, and correspondence were saved.

In 1950, Bill and Cyrus moved to Maine to help run Margaret Smith Company, a handbag company created by Cyrus’s sister that had become a runaway success. Through Bill’s designs and connections, the handbags became a fashion necessity sold in specialty stores and at Bonwit Teller through the 1970s.

They lived in a c. 1800 house in Damariscotta, Maine, that triggered Bill’s passion for historic preservation. He developed a network of experts in the museum and preservation fields who became trusted consultants and friends. He loved tracking down Bowman and other Maine pieces. In the late 1970s, Bill opened Lilac Cottage Antiques in Wiscasset, which he ran until his death in 2016.

Bill spent more than fifty years buying, collecting, and restoring Bowman House to its elegant eighteenth-century appearance. Just as Jonathan Bowman had done, Bill created a beautiful and sophisticated world tucked away in rural Maine.