BOWEN, LOUISE [de KOVEN] (Mrs. Joseph Tilton Bowen), the daughter of John and Helen (Hadduck) [de Koven], was born in Chicago, Ill., February 26, 1859.
Mrs. Bowen, who is one of the most distinguished citizens of Chicago, unlike most of her fellow citizens, traces her lineage to Fort Dearborn itself. Her grandfather, Edward H. Hadduck, came to the Fort in the early thirties as a young government agent, bring $200,000 in gold for governmental uses. He was so delighted with his impression of the virgin prairie extending south [and] west from the Fort, situated on the Lake at the mouth of the river, and so convinced of the commercial possibilities to be developed from the trading posts already established there, that he returned a year later with his bride, driving from western Ohio in a typical prairie schooner. Like all the other settlers, he was obliged for his own protection, to live within the stockade of the fort and his daughter Helen born there was the third white girl according to tradition born on the territory which has since become Chicago. Mr. Hadduck was a typical pioneer citizen who amassed a large fortune in the opportunities which Chicago offered him, and was conspicuous in all the city's early history. Mrs. Bowen in some early recollections which she has set down for the benefit of her children thus describes him and his house: "My earliest recollection are clustered around an old-fashioned red brick house which belonged to my grandfather, which was set back from the road on the corner of Wabash Avenue and Monroe Street. There were shade trees in front of the house and a broad strip of green sward before the roadway was reached. This road was made of good black prairie soil. When it was muddy, it was almost impassable and when it was dry, there were [huge] ruts which shook up every one who drove over them.
The house itself, was big and roomy. The front door, on Wabash [page 2] Avenue, was never opened expect twice a day, once when my grandfather went to his mill in the morning, and once when he returned at night, he having a partiality for that door and refusing to use the side door, which stood unlatched during the day for the use of other members of the family.
I always met my grandfather when he came home at night. He was an interesting figure, wearing black broadcloth clothes with a high collar, an old fashioned black stock and, alas, a large diamond solitaire which adorned his shirt front. His high hat was always shiny as well as his right coat sleeve which served instead of a hat brush. When he came home at night, he was all covered with white dust from his mill and I used to get a brush to help him leave this dust on the door mat rather than take it into the immaculate hall. I can see him now, as he would put his head in the door and call to me, then as I came running down the stairs, he would take off his tall hat, which was full of papers of all descriptions, leases, mortgages, bank notes, even the morning newspaper, and usually something he had brought home for me.
In these early days, the cattle for the Stock Yards were unloaded at the Randolph Street Station of the Illinois Central and were often driven through the streets to the Yards. Michigan Avenue was not much more than a sandy beach, and as Wabash Avenue was a harder and better roadway, the cattle were frequently driven down this Avenue. Sometimes the steers would become frightened and would rush from one side of the street to the other, coming up onto the sidewalk and [imperiling] the passersby. Many a day I have quickly climbed over the low iron fence around my grandfather's house, in order to get away from the frightened beasts.
Almost next door to my grandfather's house was a little hotel, the old Clifton House, where the Lincolns often stopped when they were in town. Tad Lincoln was a great friend of mine and I remember Mrs. Lincoln [page 3] perfectly well talking to us as we were playing together.
Sometimes as we slowly drove our horse and buggy through the town, my grandmother would tell me stories of early days in Chicago, when she lived in the Fort and used to pull herself across the Chicago River on a little flat boat, which was propelled by the passenger pulling a rope stretched across the river. She would tell me how she used to go to the North side to pick blackberries, how oftentimes, she would hear an Indian coming and would crouch down beside the bushes until he had passed. Then there were thrilling tales of Indian massacres, and of her experience of being shut up in the Fort in one room, with fifty other people, for several days, while the Indians bombarded the place, shooting flaming arrows into the Fort, and often attempting to set it on fire, and how happy the [beleaguered] were when the scout, who had been sent out to get help, returned with some soldiers and the Indians were dispersed.
She would point out to me as we drove, the prairie schooner wagons which were often seen in our streets and recall the lovely drive she had had to early Chicago, although as they drove she always sat with a loaded rifle across her knees."
Dearborn Seminary where Mrs. Bowen was educated was at that time situated on the present site of Marshall Field's great store, although before Mrs. Bowen graduated, the school had been moved to Twenty-Second Street and Wabash Avenue, where it remained for many years a pioneer outpost of education for the young women of Chicago. Mrs. Bowen finished when she was sixteen, but as the graduation exercises were held in a large church, her father unfortunately would not allow her to be so unwomanly as to appear. The incident is interesting in the light of Mrs. Bowen's later successes as a public speaker.
For some years after this inglorious graduation, the active young girl occupied herself with such public work as was allowed her. [page 4] Naturally it was to be found only in connection with the church. She established a bible class at St. James of one hundred young men. Chicago at that time was full of enterprising youths who had taken Horace Greeley's advice, to go West. They lived in rather uncomfortable boarding houses and although many of them evolved later into leading citizens, they were at that time rather forlorn. Their enterprising Bible Class teacher came to know them very well and finally established a Club House for them on Huron Street which was her first large public philanthropy. Her second venture was a kitchen garden association which she established with Miss Eleanor Ryerson and pushed with characteristic energy. She was married in June 1886, to Joseph Tilton Bowen who had come to Chicago from Providence, R.I. During the next decade she was very much absorbed in her four children and her public activity was largely confined to work in connection with the Children's Memorial Hospital. She was President of the Board and built a wing that the Hospital might extend its usefulness. She was also President of the Passevant Hospital and the Vice President of the Board of St. Luke's during this same period.
In 1896 she became a Trustee and the Treasurer of the Hull House, the pioneer Social Settlement of Chicago, and with characteristic earnestness and devotion, identified herself with its manifold activities. Her many generous gifts to the Settlement were in a large measure the outgrowth of her personal knowledge of the neighborhood and its needs. She had been for ten years a member and an officer in a Hull-House Woman's Club when she built the spacious hall which not only housed the Club activities, but many other social and educational enterprises carried on at Hull-House, notably an open dance once a week verifying Mrs. V Bowen's belief that the public dance may be made a wholesome as well as a popular form of recreation. She built a large five-story structure to take care of the activities of the 2500 men and boys, after she had [page 5] become familiar with the great need for better recreational facilities in the vicinity and the influence politicians often obtain over young men through the control not only of saloons, but of club and billiard rooms as well.
Mrs. Bowen also gave to Hull House, in memory of her husband, who died in 1911, the Joseph Tilton Bowen Country Club consisting of seventy-two acres of beautiful land at Waukegan Illinois. On this site she erected "commons," containing a commodious kitchen and dining room. This Club she endowed so that its gardens may always be properly cared for. Children and their mothers are sent to it every summer from the congested parts of Chicago to enjoy an outing amidst its beautiful orchards and ravines. This Club accommodates two hundred people at one time.
The first Juvenile Court not only of America, but "in the world," was opened in Chicago in 1899, largely through the influence of a group of women who felt that children were too easily arrested, were confined in wretched quarters, often with debasing companions, and in the end did not receive the care to which they were entitled. The Judiciary of Cook County established the court and cooperated in every way in the new undertaking. But the group were very anxious that the Court should be a model in every respect and made themselves responsible for a staff of probation officers without whom the whole plan would be more or less a travesty. They organized into the Juvenile Court Committee with Miss Julie Lathrop, who afterwards became the first Chief of the Children's Bureau in Washington, as President. She was succeeded by Mrs. Bowen, who for seven years with the Committee took not only the responsibility of securing the salaries of the constantly increasing numbers of Probation Officers, but of presiding over the deliberations of the Committee as they carefully considered case after case brought before them by the Probation Officers, sorely in need of help and advice in their new work. The [page 6] members of the Committee, especially Mrs. Bowen as President, sat quite regularly in the new Court in a chair beside the Judge, who was always ready to discuss his decisions with them. This same Committee established a home for children who needed to be kept for a few weeks awaiting trial and under no circumstances did they permit a child to be put in a police station or jail. In 1907 the salaries of the Probations Officers as well as the maintenance of the Juvenile Detention Home was taken over by the County, and while the group was freed of financial responsibility, for many years they continued their interest in dependent and delinquent children, advocating the Mothers Pension Law, and other safeguarding measures which became attached to the Juvenile Court. At this time the Committee turned its attention to the formation of a Juvenile Protective Association, the purpose of which is to reach the child before he yields to temptation, to influence his parents, to raise the standard of the home, and to keep him from committing the crimes and misdemeanors which take him into Court. This Association receives every year about six thousand complaints concerning children who are going wrong or concerning conditions demoralizing to children. It prosecutes in the courts when necessary, it labors with parents and guardians, and it endeavors to bring about an enlightened public [opinion] which will put out of business those place [imperiling] children and young people. It has been followed by Juvenile Protective Associations in many other states although there is no national body.
Mrs. Bowen has been for twelve years a member of the Executive Committee of the Committee of Fifteen which has done such valiant work in enforcing the Injunction and Abatement Law and in suppressing commercialized vice in Chicago, for although her primary interest was in the children, she realized that children with every possible safeguard and special attention cannot be secure unless decent general conditions surround all of [page 7] the citizens, big and little, and all laws fearlessly enforced. This is clearly brought out in a book which Mrs. Bowen wrote out of her long experience with the Juvenile Protective Association, and which was published by Macmillan Company entitled, "Safeguards for City Children at Work and at Play." This book utilized the publication of the Juvenile Protective Association, many of which had been written by Mrs. Bowen herself. Several of these in pamphlet form have had a very large circulation, one of them, "The Straight Girl in the Crooked Path," having been published in full in the Sunday edition of a Chicago newspaper, and affording a basis for much comment throughout the city and according to [rumor], producing a certain panic in the police department itself. Mrs. Bowen has been for eleven years Vice President of the United Charities of Chicago, greatly interested not only in alleviating poverty, but in discovering that almost invisible line so often crossed by the child whom poverty has made a dependent, into the regions of delinquency and crime.
On appointment by the governor, Mrs. Bowen served during the war on the State Council of Defense as the only woman member of that body. She was also elected at the beginning of the war Chairman of the Woman's Committee, Council of National Defense, Illinois Division. There were serving under her, during the war 694,000 women who registered for work in Illinois. This Committee perfected the most complete organization of women ever attempted in Illinois with 7,700 chairmen throughout the State, every village large enough to have a [post office] being represented. The Woman's Committee was divided into eighteen departments.
Mrs. Bowen in February 1920 was appointed by the United States Department of Justice as Woman Fair Price Commissioner for Illinois; in June 1920 received the Degree of Master of Arts from Knox College, Illinois; in April 1922 was appointed by President Harding as official delegate of the United States to the Pan-American Congress of Women held in Baltimore. [page 8] During the three days of this Congress a constant demand for careful information upon child welfare, laws for women and industrial safeguards in the United States with its diversified state laws, was made upon her and she was obliged to give them reports in practically spontaneous [speeches]. The occasion brought out to the full her unusual gift for making facts and figures alive and illuminating; dramatizing statistics as it were, and thus driving home her point as can never be done by mere generalizing however eloquent. This power has always characterized her public speaking which has been singularly direct and forceful and has placed her in the front rank of women speakers in the United States. [page 9]
Mrs. Bowen ↑valiant↓ service for the cause of Woman Suffrage and for two years served as a member of the Executive Board of the National Association. She realized however that the cause would not be won until women actually made good in the political life of the nation.
She has been for eight years, out of the twelve years of its existence, President of the Woman's City Club, Chicago, with rooms at 16 Wabash Avenue. This club has thirty-four civic committees and has 5,056 women on its membership roll. It was organized during one of the dark periods of municipal corruption in Chicago, and long before women had the vote. It constantly interested and educated its members in civic affairs, but did not hesitate to take a hand from time to time, when occasion seemed to require it, in actual civic reform. The Club had been no small factor in changing the method of garbage disposal in the city, in increasing and regulating bathing beaches in the Lake, in defeating bond issues when it seemed likely that the money would be improperly or foolishly spent and in many another situation constantly confronting the voters of Chicago. At one time they made a striking contribution by furnishing a program of municipal activity after an overflow meeting held in the largest auditorium in the City, which rather dramatically rallied together the dispersed and discouraged forces of municipal betterment. In another crisis, as is conceded by the political parties themselves, the Club was a determining factor in the defeat of undesirable candidates for municipal Judgeship, who [page 10] would certainly have placed the courts under political domination. To be President of such a Club requires both courage and unsleeping vigilance, and happily Mrs. Bowen possesses both qualities. She is ready to defend her position with her pen and by spoken word, and often her decision not only influences many club matters but also actual civic situations.
Mrs. Bowen is a member of the Executive Committee of the Woman's Roosevelt Republican Club and a member of the Chicago Woman's Club, the Fortnightly, the Cordon and the Friday Clubs.
↑Of her four children;↓ John [de Koven] Bowen, educated at Hill School and Yale University, at the outbreak of the war enlisted in the United States Navy and was in active service as a lieutenant throughout the war. He married Elizabeth Winthrop Stevens of New York and has three children. Joseph Tilton Bowen Jr., was educated at Hill School and served in France during the war as captain in the army. He married Gwendolyn High of Chicago and has one child. Helen Hadduck Bowen is married to William McCormick Blair of Chicago and has four children. Louise [de Koven] Bowen was married to Mason Phelps of Chicago, has one child.
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