My Genealogy Hound

W. D. Bowers. Among the extensive industrial enterprises which form the basis of Clay County’s importance and prosperity is the stave and head factory located at Corning, in which Mr. Bowers has worked for ten years, and of which he has been foreman two years, working his way up to that position from a mill-hand. His native State is Ohio, his birth having occurred in Harrison County in 1851, and his parents were also from that State. They were Jacob and Lavina Bowers, nee Downs, the father being a tiller of the soil and successful in his calling, which occupation he continued to follow until his death in 1881. His wife is still living and makes her home in her native State. W. D. Bowers, like the majority of youths, bent his energies to learning the occupation in which his father was engaged, and also acquired a good education in the public schools of Harrison County. After the late Civil War he joined the regular army of the United States, and was stationed at different points in the South, but in 1879 he came to Corning, Ark., and began working in the mill in which he is now employed. His wife, whom he married in 1879, and who was formerly Miss Lenora Powell, was born in Tennessee, and was a daughter of B. C. Powell and wife, also of that State, the former now residing near Austin, and the latter deceased. In 1883 Mr. Bowers lost his excellent wife, she having borne him two children, one of whom is living, Floyd. In 1886 Mr. Bowers was married in Union County, Ill., to Miss Mary Stewart, a native of Indiana. Her parents, Henry and Jane (Pollock) Stewart, were Ohio people, who moved first to Indiana and from there to Cape Girardeau County, Mo., where they opened up a farm in 1874, and later kept a hotel at Doniphan. Here Mr. Stewart died in 1887, his wife having died in Indiana, in 1885. He enlisted in the Union army from Indiana, at the breaking out of the Civil War. Mr. Bowers has never been very active in politics. Socially he is a member of the K. of H. He is very public-spirited, and has always practiced those principles of fairness and honesty which are bound to command the respect and admiration of all right-minded people.