Author: Bowden, John
Biography:
BOWDEN, John (c. 1741-1818: ancestry.co.uk)
This author can be identified through the epitaph on the tombstone of his father, John Bowden, who died on 23 Apr. 1772 and was buried in St. Oswald churchyard, Chester. The epitaph has pride of place in the section on epitaphs for fathers in Bowden’s Epitaph Writer. John Bowden the son is buried in the same grave as his father; he died on 4 Sept. 1818, aged 77. No birth record has been located—searching is complicated by variant spellings of his surname--and the name of his mother is not known. He, his father, and his brother George (baptised in Chester on 3 Nov. 1745) seem to have been slaters. A John Bowden married Jane Norris in Chester on 16 Oct. 1770. There is no confirmation that this was John Bowden the poet but that couple had at least one child, a son, who was baptised on 18 Sept. 1785; almost certainly there were others for whom records have not been located. An additional sighting of John Bowden (and his brother George) is in the subscription list to B. Powell’s Libertinism Dissected (1775). (ancestry.co.uk 20 June 2023) SR