Last updated: November 12, 2023
Person
Joseph Bowman
NPS Photo/ James Mattoon
Quick Facts
Significance:
American Revolutionary War, Illinois Campaign
Place of Birth:
Frederick County, Virginia
Date of Birth:
March 8, 1752
Place of Death:
Ft. Patrick Henry, Vincennes, Indiana
Date of Death:
August 1779
Place of Burial:
Vincennes, Indiana
Cemetery Name:
St. Francis Xavier Cemetery
Joseph Bowman, born in 1752, came from Frederick County, Virginia. His family became some of the first settlers of Kentucky where Bowman learned the art of woodland living, hunting, and fighting.
At the age of 22, he was appointed an officer of the militia during Lord Dunmore's War in 1774. It was during this expedition against the Shawnee that Bowman met and fought alongside George Rogers Clark. The two young men were remarkably alike in family background, education, and ability.
Bowman played an important role in helping secure Prairie du Rocher, St. Phillipe, and Cahokia. Immediately after the capture of Kaskaskia, to protect the expedition's western flank, the conquest of Cahokia had to be undertaken. Bowman assembled a force of some thirty mounted Virginia Rangers and a like number of French militia members who had pledge support to the American cause. Speed was imperative for the small force under Bowman's command. Although weary from continued marching and loss of sleep, the necessity of taking Cahokia was so apparent that Bowman and his troop started the evening of the first day of the occupancy of Kaskaskia. The men were to spend the next three nights without further sleep, most of the time being in the saddle. Bowman wrote a short account of this expedition and continued his journal through the march to and after the campaign at Vincennes’ Fort Sackville. Its simplicity and lack of self-glorification is in stark comparison to Clark's journal.
After taking park in the conquest of Fort Sackville, Bowman traveled back to Cahokia with the vanguard of Clark's troops where he worked on plans to take Detroit in the spring.
He returned to Vincennes in the summer of 1779 to recruit for the Detroit expedition. While at Ft. Patrick Henry (the former Ft. Sackville), he either succumbed to injuries from an accidental discharge of gunpower during the celebratory firing of cannons after capturing the fort in February or from ‘an ailment in the head’, as stated in a letter from Captain Williams to Colonel Clark. Bowman is often considered probably the only officer to die during Clark's campaign in the west, passing away in August 1779, at the age of 27.
The last page of his journal is blank, except for an anonymous notation: "God save the [Virginia] commonwealth, this 15th day of August 1779." A bronze grave marker with the date of 18 August 1779 was later, placed in the St. Francis Xavier Cemetery, adjacent to the George Rogers Clark National Historical Park, Vincennes, Knox County, Indiana, though he was buried somewhere along the Wabash River.