Hello, I’m Susan Lee Ward, author of Lifelines: The Bowen Love Letters, a primary source collection of nearly seven hundred letters exchanged between Captain Isaac Bowen and his wife Catherine “Katie” Cary Bowen between 1846 and 1858, just prior to the Civil War.
Lifelines is a love story, a frontier adventure, and a window into American history told entirely in the words of the people who lived it. Set against the backdrop of the Santa Fe Trail, the Mexican-American War, and the westward expansion of the U.S. Army, it is one of the finest pre-Civil War epistolary collections in American historical nonfiction, a description that comes not from me, but from Dr. Leo E. Oliva, the Santa Fe Trail historian, who called Katie’s letters among the finest pre-Civil War collections about military life he has ever encountered.
I spent twenty years making sure those words were earned.
How It Started
The journey began in the late 1990s, when my sister Diane Kathleen Haug was helping one of our aunts relocate and found a single photocopied article about Gwladys Bowen, a distant cousin, whose family letters were being used as part of an educational program at Fort Union National Monument in northeastern New Mexico. Diane had spent seven years living near Fort Union. She sent me the article, some family photos, and a genealogical chart.
What I found was extraordinary. Catherine “Katie” Cary Bowen and Captain Isaac Bowen , my great-great-grandparents had traveled the Santa Fe Trail, lived at frontier military posts across New Mexico Territory, and corresponded prolifically across twelve years of marriage. Their letters documented not just their own lives but the full texture of pre-Civil War American frontier life: the battles, the boredom, the domestic details, the humor, and the grief.
Twenty Years of Research
My research was painstaking and deliberate. I verified every fact in the letters, the proper spelling of names and places, the methods of transportation, the ingredients in recipes, the medicinal treatments, the public events, the historical figures. I learned about military life on the Santa Fe Trail, the Mexican-American War battles Isaac fought at Monterrey and Buena Vista, and the remarkable range of historical figures Katie and Isaac encountered in person: General Zachary Taylor, Colonel Jefferson Davis, a young Ulysses S. Grant, President Millard Fillmore, Kit Carson, and on a steamboat journey a young riverboat pilot named Samuel Langhorne Clemens, not yet known as Mark Twain.
I also learned about Margaret Margy a woman purchased in 1851 when Isaac could find no reliable household servant, enslaved and then freed by the end of 1858, beloved by the Bowen children, and now the inspiration for the forthcoming Sergeant Bruno series: a picaresque historical adventure told through the eyes of the Bowen family dog, with Margy as Bruno’s best friend and the moral heart of the story.
By 2015, I had researched and verified every fact in the collection. I approached Glassbook Publishing, who prepared and typeset the letters into a complete volume. Lifelines: The Bowen Love Letters was published in 2020.
Recognition and Community
Lifelines has been featured in Kansas History magazine and serialized in Wagon Tracks, the journal of the Santa Fe Trail Association. It is available through the Santa Fe Trail Association’s Last Chance Store and through all major booksellers. Dr. Oliva’s endorsement from a scholar who does not dispense praise casually, remains the validation that means most to me.
I spent twenty years as the careful, devoted steward of Katie and Isaac’s letters. I verified every name, every date, every recipe, every route. These letters survived yellow fever, a comminuted fracture at Fort Union, three orphaned children, and more than a century in various family archives. They deserved everything I could give them.
About Me
I am an Army brat, raised at Fort Bliss with the sound of 21-gun salutes and the smell of saddle soap. My mother served with the American Red Cross in New Zealand during WWII and later worked as a military post librarian. My father served in the U.S. Army for thirty-two years. I spent my four university years at Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas, studying English and later worked in public administration. I live in San Antonio, Texas, with my husband, William Shelton Ward.
The Sergeant Bruno series beginning with Sergeant Bruno, Intrepid Trail Traveler is currently in progress. I hope you will follow along as Margy’s story, and Bruno’s, makes its way into the world.
Lifelines: The Bowen Love Letters is available now:
- Amazon
- Santa Fe Trail Association Last Chanchttps://www.lastchancestore.org/santa-fe-trail-books/e Store
Lifelines – The Bowen Love Letters can also be purchased here:
http://bookstore.dorrancepublishing.com/lifelines-the-bowen-love-letters/