HENRY EYRING BOWMAN
(1859-1933)
Henry Eyring Bowman was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, February 10, 1859. His father’s name was Isaac Bowman, and was born in Wooster, Wayne County, Ohio, in the year 1826. His ancestors were from Holland. Coming to America they were among the people known as the Pennsylvania Dutch.
Henry’s mother was Bertha Louise Eyring, born in Coberg, Germany, in the year 1836. Her mother was of French background. Bertha, at the age of seventeen came to America with her brother, Henry Eyring. In 1853 and 1855 respectively, they both joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints.
During his boyhood years Henry Eyring Bowman had few opportunities of attending school. He was kept busy helping his father on the farm and freighting. But he had a great desire to learn and would carry along his spe11ing and arithmetic books. In the faU of 1883 he registered as a student at the Brigham Young Academy, then under direction of Karl G. Maeser. Because of his private studies, Henry was enrolled in the Normal School. He graduated in 1885. He then accepted a teaching assignment in St. George, Utah, where he met and married Mary Gubler, who was also a teacher there. Soon after, they moved to Kanab, Utah, in Kane County, where he taught for four years until going into cooperative merchandising business.
He built a large brick home, the first modern home in Kanab and took a prominent part in all community projects. As school trustee he supervised the building of the school house. He served on the Kanab Stake High Council and was county attorney. When Utah became a state he was admitted to the Utah Bar along with William M. McCarty.
In 1897, having received a call to a Church mission to Germany, he sold his home and business interests and moved his family to Provo, Utah. In 1900, two months after returning from Germany, he took a trip to the Mormon colonies in Mexico. His journal states that for years he had a great desire to go where his Uncle Henry Eyring was one of the early settlers at Colonia Juarez. Impressed with conditions there and the outlook for future development, he immediately moved his family to Colonia Juarez. A few months later, however, he bought an interest in the Dublan Co-operative and moved to Colonia Dub Ian where he bought a farm and a home. At this time there were two stores in Colonia Juarez, and two in Colonia Dublan.
All of them were buying and selling on credit and purchasing merchandise separately at high prices through Ketelsen and Degeteau in Nuevo Casas Grandes, Chihuahua. Henry put his store on a cash basis and found that by purchasing merchandise from markets in Mexico City and other places he was able to buy goods for at least twenty-five percent less than the other stores. He discontinued purchasing from Ketelsen and Degeteau and made his own trips for merchandise from Colonia Dublan to Mexico City and other markets in Mexico. He advertised freely and in a few months was drawing trade away from the other stores.
As a result, the colony merchants consolidated and organized the Union Mercantile S. A. Ltd. with the main store at Colonia Dublan and branch stores at Colonia Juarez and Colonia Diaz. Henry was made general manager. He closed one of the two stores in each of the colonies. The business expanded rapidly, and the Dublan store soon became an up-to-date department store.
Owing to the high tariff on imported goods, he conceived the idea of establishing factories under the direction of the Co-op Association. At Dublan a factory for making candy, and lemon and vanilla extracts was established. He also inaugurated a millinery and dress-making shop. In the confectionery department he placed the first soda fountain in Mexico. Other projects consisted of a general blacksmith shop and a factory to build wagons and buggies. The store also installed windmills and water piping, and was soon a center for farmer supplies and various kinds of machinery. The Co-op even made an assortment of coffins, carried funeral trimming and did undertaking work. The business expanded until fifty people were on the payroll and did a business of $750,000 per annum. It drew trade from a radius of 200 miles. Ranchers from Sonora brought tobacco and other products on burros to trade for merchandise.
In later years telephones were installed in the colonies and the central switchboard was located in the Union Mercantile building. The Co-op established the first modern cash handling methods. From each department in the store (dry goods, shoe, grocery, etc.) ran a series of “Trolley Change Carriers” on wires hung from the ceiling to the main office. Money from sales was shipped to the office from clerks in small leather receptacles and change was made at a central office and returned to the customer. This outmoded the cash-boys who had been running throughout the store carrying money and change from the office. He also brought the first automobile into the colonies, a two cylinder, chain driven Buick that was indeed a “horseless carriage.”
In 1903, three years after going to Mexico, he married Wilhelmina Walser, a popular girl of Colonia Juarez, who was recognized for her ability in music. Henry built two modern brick homes in Dublan where his families lived. In 1910 the Green interests began the construction of a railroad from Nuevo Casas Grandes to Chihuahua City. Many colonists signed contracts with the company to work on the railroad and were furnished with supplies by the Union Mercantile until there was a debt due to the store of $50,000. The money not forthcoming, the work was stopped and Henry took over Green’s outfit consisting of 200 good mules with harnesses, tools, and camp outfits.
There were two large natural reservoirs or dry lakes southeast of Dublan. Colonists had long considered the construction of a canal, six miles long to conduct the surplus water of the Casas Grandes River into these reservoirs. The acquired Green outfits were divided among the colonists to use for deepening the reservoirs and the construction of the canal, which was finished in 1911.
Henry Eyring Bowman was made president of the Canal Company and willingly helped financially. When large deposits of caliche rock threatened to halt the work on the canal, he supplied dynamite and also hired a demolition expert to blast through the rock to allow the scrapers to continue with the channel. He also was instrumental in obtaining from the government a concession to construct the canal, which was thirty feet wide at the bottom. The large headgate, placed at the river, had adjustable gates to control the flow of water into the canal. The canal-lake and subsequent development of an irrigation system throughout the valley were responsible in developing farm lands and bringing under cultivation hundreds of acres of unused land. Water from the lake that was stored there, as a result of the canal, continues to supply the Dublan Valley through drier times of the year. The system developed in 1911 is still in use although water from pumps and other irrigation systems have displaced the lake as the major source of water. The lake has also developed into a recreation region with motor-boating, water-skiing, swimming etcetera, a major attraction in the Dublan area.
Because of the difficulty of crossing the Casas Grandes River, Henry Bowman promoted the idea of a bridge. He obtained from the government a concession to build a lane through the fields to the river at a place where he thought it feasible to place a bridge. He then supervised the driving of the bridge pilings and the construction of the bridge itself. Although the wooden section of the bridge has been replaced many times, the original pilings are still in use.
Henry Eyring Bowman was prominent in advancing many enterprises for the betterment of the community. He also gave freely of his time to church service. He was a member of the Stake High Council, a Sunday School teacher, and held a position in the Mutual Improvement Association. He was also intensely interested in sports and athletics, both to encourage all to participate and to excel. He always had an interest in the young men and boys of the community and helped them organize a basketball team. While he worked as their coach, he gained their respect and cooperation. From the personnel of the Union Mercantile he formed basketball and baseball teams which competed successfully in tournaments in Mexico City and the Southwest of the United States. Through his promotion of sports, the feeling of friendly competition existed among the teams of the Colonies and those in other cities of Mexico. It was his Union Mercantile team that was the first to defeat the Juarez Stake Academy team in baseball, which up until this time had not been challenged by local teams.
In 1910 revolutionary unrest commenced in Mexico. As conditions became more uncertain, the Stake authorities decided that it would be best for the colonists to surrender their arms as demanded by the rebels and move their families to the United States. Henry was appointed to go to El Paso and arrange for transportation. In El Paso he found A. W. Ivins who had been sent from Salt Lake City to advise the colonists. After consultation he awoke the railroad officials and after he reported conditions, they placed their entire equipment at his disposal. The service furnished by the railroad consisted mostly of box cars and the colonists were able to bring only a very small part of their personal belongings. In three days, 2500 women, children and old men arrived in El Paso, Texas.
The personal losses of Henry Eyring Bowman were tremendous. In hopes of possible indemnity, he later, in El Paso, was appointed a member of a committee to collect affidavits and evidence to be used against the Mexican Government in claiming reimbursement for their lost property.
In the fall of 1911, Henry Eyring Bowman had formed a partnership with Niels Larson, and contracted to build a railroad from the lumber town of Pearson thirteen miles into the mountains toward Colonia Pacheco. This was heavy mountain work and equipment for it amounted to about $1,000,000 pesos ($500,000 dollars). By July 1912 three fourths of the work had been completed and since the rainy season was approaching he laid in supplies to finish the job. His equipment consisted of 135 mules with harnesses, wagons, carts, scrapers, etc.; also tents and tools for the men. He also had on hand $10,000 pesos worth of powder, $25,000 pesos in commissary supplies and hay and grain for the animals for three months. The rebels took possession of all this, and used the mules and outfits to haul it away into the mountains. He owned in Colonia Dublan a splendid, well-furnished, ten-room two-story modern brick home, a full block of orchard, a vineyard, a barn, garage, automobile, all easily worth $25,000 dollars and his family walked out with what they could carry in a suitcase.
After the families had left, the men and older boys remained in the colonies to protect their property. They sadly watched the revolutionaries run a train of box cars down the tracks in front of the Union Mercantile, and with 500 men for protection, carry out merchandise to fill the cars.
The revolutionaries then ran the train south and, stopping at every town, switched off a car and told the people to help themselves. All the merchandise of the Union Mercantile was lost and was never recovered. After this incident, the colonists took their horses into the mountains for protection. Thinking the colonists unarmed, the soldiers became more and more offensive, so within two weeks after the families had gone, the men and boys decided to go also. Following instructions, they met at the “Stairs,” a place in the mountains, with 1000 head of horses, and began traveling overland to Hachita, New Mexico.
Henry Eyring Bowman remained along the border for four years hoping for conditions to improve and permit him to return to Mexico, to salvage his property. With his seven sons, he rented a forty-acre pear farm eight miles south of EI Paso and an eleven hundred-acre alfalfa ranch in Dona Ana County, New Mexico, near Las Cruces. His family continued playing basketball for diversion and formed the “Bowman Brothers” team. Through their association with the YMCA of EI Paso, they won the Tournament of the Southwest.
In 1915, after making a trip to Utah to investigate conditions, he decided to return to Kanab. He moved there in January of 1916 with his family. There he bought back his interest in the Bowman Company which he had sold nineteen years before.
Since the settling of Kane County, fifteen miles of sand separated Kanab, the county seat, and Long Valley, which was the chief agricultural part of the county. This sand was so heavy it was impossible to cross it with a car or empty wagon. Travelers had to take a round-about route of fifty miles over roads in bad condition. Agriculturists demanded that a road be built from Long Valley to Kanab. An engineer estimated it would cost $400,000 to build a good gravel surfaced road along the proposed sandy route. Kane county had but $30,000 with which to build the road.
Henry Eyring Bowman proposed a type of construction that would make a good road across the sands, the cost of which could be made within the $30,000 available. The commissioners approved his plan, made him state road agent and authorized construction.
He used a working force no larger than he could personally supervise and he worked right along with his men to make sure they did a full day’s work. The construction consisted of fifteen miles of sand road, three miles of dugway, a fifty-foot bridge across the Long Valley stream and another bridge across the Kanab Creek. It took a year to complete the road, but when it was completed and all types of traffic were using it, there were still $23,000 of the $30,000 left for further improvement. He predicted that the thin coat of two or three inches of capping on the sand would be able to sustain all types of traffic, and become even firmer with time. This theory was not accepted at the time, but in later years the Long Valley road convinced all that such was true. This type of construction has been used on sand roads throughout the state since that time.
Henry E. Bowman’s son, Henry Jr., had become established in business in Milford, Utah in 1922. After leaving his business in Kanab to his son Othello, he moved to Milford with the rest of his family where he bought a home. In 1926, after a visit to Logan, he and his wife decided to move there permanently. In June of 1927, he was set apart as an ordinance worker in the Logan Temple. Because of a serious illness he went to Provo, Utah and there passed away in the home of his son, Henry, Jr., in the year 1933.
Claudius Bowman III, great-grandson
Stalwarts South of the Border page 58
Nelle Spilsbury Hatch