Lifelines – The Bowen Love Letters is an edited compilation of several hundred personal, intimate letters detailing the lives of my great-great grandparents between 1846 and 1858. The surviving letters written by Catherine “Katie” Cary Bowen and her husband, Captain Isaac Bowen, include both sides of correspondence between a young “Old Army” officer and his wife, and letters between Katie Bowen and her parents in Houlton, Maine, to whom she was very close. Katie was a dutiful daughter and wrote to her mother frequently, telling her everything of interest. Her mother did the same.
The Bowen Love Letters have enduring value as reliable memories of the past and have been preserved in their original order. They reveal the young couple’s private thoughts, opinions, and activities during the Mexican War (1846-1848); while setting up households at both Fort Mifflin and Schuylkill Arsenal, PA; spending several months on the old Santa Fe Trail as part of a military wagon train heading to the U.S. Army’s newly designated supply depot at Fort Union in a remote part of northeastern New Mexico Territory; setting up households at Fort Union, Albuquerque, and Santa Fe, NM; living in a boarding house in downtown New Orleans, LA; and, living in a rented cottage in Pass Christian, Mississippi, to avoid the heat and mosquitoes that plagued New Orleans during the summers. The Bowen Love Letters include references to and descriptions of many of the era’s public events, notable civilians, military officers, politicians, and U.S. Presidents. Their letters also provide details of military life with children on the southwestern frontier.
“Katie Bowen was literate, observant, curious, compassionate, lucid and philosophical. Her letters are informative, affectionate, and delightful to read. These letters constitute one of the finest pre-Civil War collections about military life.” Dr. Leo E. Oliva, Santa Fe Trail Historian