BOWEN, LOUISE deKOVEN (Mrs. Joseph Tilton Bowen), the daughter of John and Helen (Hadduck) deKoven, was born in Chicago, Illinois, 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, bringing $200,000.00 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 post 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 was 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.
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. Bowne 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. [page 2]
For some years after this inglorious graduation, the active young girl occupied herself with such public work as was allowed her. 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 Woman's Board of the Passavant Hospital and the Vice-President of the Woman's Board of St. Luke's Hospital during the same period.
In 1896 she became a Trustee and the Treasurer of 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 was for seventeen years a member and for many years the President of the Hull House Woman's Club for whom she built [page 3] 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. Bowen's belief that the public dance may be made a wholesome as well as a popular form of recreation. She also built a large five-story structure to take care of the activities of 2500 men and boys, after she had become familiar with the great need for better recreational facilities in the vicinity and the influence politicians often obtained over young men through the control, not only of saloons, but of Clubs and billiard rooms as well.
Mrs. Bowen also gave 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 a "Commons" containing a commodious kitchen and dining room; also a building containing sleeping accommodations. This Club she endowed so that its gardens and buildings 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, of which Mrs. Bowen was one of the moving spirits, were very anxious that the Court should be a model in every respect and made themselves responsible for a staff of Probation [page 4] Officers, without whom the whole plan would be more or less a travesty. They organized into the Juvenile Court Committee with Miss Julia Lathrop, who afterwards became the first Chief of the Children's Bureau in Washington, as President. She was succeeded the following year by Mrs. Bowen, who for seven years 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 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 Detention 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 Juvenile Court Committee secured the legislation which placed the salaries of the Probation Officers, as well as the maintenance of the Juvenile Detention Home under the County, and while the Juvenile Court Committee 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, with Mrs. Bowen still President, 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 the Court. This Association receives every year about six thousand complaints concerning children who are going wrong or concerning conditions [page 5] 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 places [imperiling] children and young people. Mrs. Bowen has been President of this Association since its inception. It has been followed by the formation of Juvenile Protective Associations in many other States although there is no National body.
Mrs. Bowen was 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 citizens, big and little, and unless all laws are 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 publications 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 on 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 thirteen 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. [page 6]
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, 692,229 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 1920 was appointed by the United States Department of Justice, as Woman Fair Price Commissioner for Illinois; in June 1920 she received the Degree of Master of Arts from Knox College Illinois; In April 1922 she was appointed by President Harding as Official Delegate of the United States to the Pan-American Congress of Women held in Baltimore. ↑In June 1926 she received the Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters at Tuft's College, Massachusetts.↓
Mrs. Bowen did voluntary service for the cause of Woman Suffrage and for two years served as a member of the Executive Board of the Woman's National Suffrage Association. She realized, however, that the cause would not be won until women actually made good in the political life of the Nation.
Mrs. Bowen was [keen] for ten years out of the fifteen years of its existence, President of the Woman's City Club of Chicago, with rooms at 360 N. Michigan Avenue. This Club has thirty-four civic Committees and has 3,300 women on its membership roll. It was organized ↑in↓ one of the dark periods of municipal corruption in Chicago, and long before women had the vote. It has constantly interested and educated its members in civic affairs, but it has not [page 7] hesitated to take a hand from time to time, when occasion seemed to require it, in actual civic reform. The Club has been no small factor in changing the method of garbage disposal in the city, in increasing and regulating bathing beaches on 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 it 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 for 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 Judges of the municipal Court, who would undoubtedly 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 and Vice-President of ↑President of↓ the Woman's Roosevelt Republican Club and a member of the Chicago Woman's Club, the Fortnightly, [the Cordon] and the Friday Club. Mrs. Bowen has four children, John deKoven 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; at the outbreak of the war enlisted in the army and [page 8] served in France throughout the war as Captain. He married Gwendolyn High of Chicago and has one child. Helen Hadduck Bowen married William McCormick Blair of Chicago and has four children. Louise deKoven Bowen was married to Mason Phelps of Chicago and has one child.
In 1923 Mrs. Bowen was made National Republican Committee for Illinois.
↑In April 1926 Mrs. Bowen published her book "Growing Up With A City."↓
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