David John Bowen died in Pocatello early on Saturday, September 24, 1955, in his own house, at the age of 93. The next morning the Idaho Sunday Journal, the Sunday edition of the Idaho State Journal, put his obituary first in its column of death notices on page 19, with a small photograph captioned "Mr. Bowen." The Salt Lake Tribune also carried a notice that day.
To Arbon Valley he was D. J. Bowen, the Samaria farmer who came over the mountain in 1892, kept the valley's first post office in his cabin and presided over its first congregation. His own account of those years is retold in D. J. Bowen tells the Pilgrim how Arbon began, and his years as bishop, widower and ward teacher in D. J. Bowen's later years, which ends with a church photograph printed in February 1954, when he was 92. This post closes that story.
The family he left
The obituary named six daughters: Sophia Lorntzen of Los Angeles, Ellen Whipple of El Paso, Mary Bush of Malad, and Annie Tallon, Stella Price and Elizabeth Dunn of Pocatello. Two of them can be followed in the valley's own papers. Stella was almost certainly Mrs. John D. Price, the daughter he was living with in 1954. Her marriage to Jack Price late in 1913 may be the earliest wedding on record held in the valley, though the printed report jumbles the names, and in 1923 the Arbon column found her father spending a weekend with her family on West Fork. Elizabeth was evidently the Lizzie Bowen of the Arbon columns. In September 1919 the American Falls Press reported her marriage in Pocatello to Louis Dunn and called her "the popular and accomplished daughter of John Bowen," the name the columns used for D. J.; in 1921 the Dunns moved onto J. E. Keeler's farm at Arbon.
His sons were not among the survivors. Brigham, the valley's rural carrier after the First World War, had died at Arbon in May 1922 (see Stories). John David, a Union Pacific freight agent at Brigham City, had died there on February 3, 1942. In 1954 the Deseret News had counted ten children, eight daughters and two sons, so two daughters had evidently also died before him; the obituary does not name them. Three of his own brothers and sisters were still living, the obituary showed: Walter Bowen in American Fork, May Hawkins in Salt Lake City and Edith Bowen in Brigham City. His brother Albert E. Bowen, the apostle, had died before the 1954 article was written.
His funeral was set for noon on Tuesday, September 27, in Pocatello's Thirteenth Ward chapel, with burial to follow at Samaria, where his first wife and his son Brigham were buried. We have not found a report of the service itself.
Where the obituary and the record differ
The obituary gives at least two dates that the papers of the time do not support.
It gives his second marriage, to Margaret Frazer Young, as May 22, 1910, in the Salt Lake Temple. The Ogden Evening Standard of May 22, 1912, and the Salt Lake Tribune the next day reported a marriage license issued at Ogden to David J. Bowen of Arbon and Margaret F. Young of Perry, Utah. The month and day match the license, so 1910 is probably a slip for 1912, though the Salt Lake Telegram's 1930 notice of her death also put the marriage, loosely, at twenty years before.
The obituary dates Margaret's death to January 8, 1926, and places his move from Arbon to Pocatello after it. The Salt Lake Telegram and the Box Elder News Journal both reported in January 1930 that Maggie Young Bowen, wife of David J. Bowen of Arbon, had died at Pocatello on a Friday morning, which was January 10, 1930. The site's family research found the same date in the Idaho death index (certificate 069038).
When he moved to town is not clear. In January 1930 the Telegram still called him "of Arbon." In March 1939 the Tribune-Journal's obituary of his granddaughter Elaine Price Roper listed her grandfather, D. J. Bowen, as living in Pocatello. The obituary's twenty years in Pocatello would put the move about 1935.
The obituary also credits him with fifteen years as bishop, the figure his 1954 profile gave. A 1944 church notice put his bishopric at 1916 to 1922, and the earlier post sets out that disagreement.
On this site: the Arbon Ward's first thirty years, who kept the Arbon post office, the Arbon area and the Bowen family album.
The story as reported
Idaho Sunday Journal, September 25, 1955, page 19. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
POCATELLO — David John Bowen, 93, for most of his life a farmer and church leader in Arbon Valley, died early Saturday in his Pocatello home. His illness had been brief.
Salt Lake City was his birthplace, and his parents were David and Annie Shackleton Bowen; our copy of the page is too faint to show the date. He was nine when he left Salt Lake City for Samaria, Idaho. Arbon Valley came next, and he farmed there for the larger part of his life.
Arbon's Latter-day Saint branch had him as its presiding elder for several years. Once the branch became a ward he was named bishop, and the obituary credits him with fifteen years in that office. His last twenty years were spent in Pocatello, where he belonged to the Thirteenth Ward of the North Pocatello Stake as a high priest and served the church as ward teacher, stake missionary, and genealogical and temple worker.
Mary Sophia Smith became his wife in the Logan LDS Temple on December 17, 1884. After losing her on May 2, 1905, he spent seven years in Logan, Utah. The obituary dates his second marriage, to Margaret Frazer Young in the Salt Lake temple, to 1910. Their home was Arbon; the obituary gives her death date as January 8, 1926, and says his move to Pocatello came after it.
Six daughters outlived him. Three were in Pocatello: Mrs. Annie Tallon, Mrs. Stella Price and Mrs. Elizabeth Dunn. The others were Mrs. Sophia Lorntzen in Los Angeles, Mrs. Ellen Whipple in El Paso, Texas, and Mrs. Mary Bush in Malad. From his own generation a brother and two sisters remained: Walter Bowen of American Fork, Utah, Mrs. May Hawkins of Salt Lake City, and Miss Edith Bowen of Brigham City, Utah. Four great-great-grandchildren were living, along with 78 great-grandchildren and 26 grandchildren.
A noon service on Tuesday in the Thirteenth Ward chapel, led by Bishop Harry M. Hirschi, was arranged through the Manning Funeral Chapel, and burial was to be at Samaria.
Sources
- Idaho Sunday Journal, September 25, 1955, page 19
- Salt Lake Tribune, September 25, 1955, page 37
- Deseret News, February 27, 1954, page 32
- Ogden Evening Standard, May 22, 1912, page 10
- Salt Lake Tribune, May 23, 1912, page 7
- American Falls Press, September 5, 1919, page 2
- American Falls Press, February 27, 1920, page 4
- American Falls Press, April 22, 1921, page 2
- American Falls Press, November 29, 1923, page 4
- Salt Lake Telegram, January 12, 1930, page 34
- Box Elder News Journal, January 14, 1930, page 1
- Tribune-Journal, March 19, 1939, page 1
- Deseret News, February 4, 1942, page 14
- Salt Lake Telegram, February 4, 1942, page 16
- Deseret News, October 21, 1944, page 27