Jefferson County Online A part of the IAGenWeb and USGenWeb Projects Who's Who in Jefferson County, 1931 John E. Bowermaster

"The Fairfield Daily Ledger"
Friday, September 4, 1931
Front Page

Who's Who In Jefferson County
By Herbert F. McDougal

JOHN E. BOWERMASTER

Nobody ever will know how many lives, in these fast moving days, have been saved on U. S. Highway 34, east of Fairfield, by John E. Bowermaster. For, when he was county supervisor, back in 1914-18, he started the movement that changed the county road that has since has in turn become State Road 8, the Harding Highway, and U. S. 34, from a meandering course back and forth across the Burlington railroad, to a location on the south of the tracks.

The movement did not come to fruition until after Mr. Bowermaster left the board, but the idea already had taken hold upon the popular imagination, and action soon followed. In straightening the road, four or five grade crossings were eliminated, each a death trap, and at some of which persons have been killed. They could not have been brooked on a paved thoroughfare.

Before he had been supervisor, Mr. Bowermaster had been county recorder for four years--1907-11--and prior to that, was assessor of Center township in 1893-6.

But his political activities were brief compared to his career as a carpenter which now is in its forty-second year. He often wonders just how much of a showing would be made by all the nails he had driven in that time, could they be put into kegs and the kegs assembled in one place. He built barns when they were used prinicpally for hay, and the horses and cattle were housed in sheds attached. And he has built many since the Louden hay carrier has made possible the horse barn with a hugh and high loft for hay storage. He always has liked the idea of building shelter for animals, for he can remember the times when stock was not well cared for, men having about all they could do to build houses for their families.

He was born at New Antioch, Ohio, February 21, 1854. That makes him now in his seventy-seventh year. But he goes up on a roof with the spriest of the younger men, and hasn't even begun to think of retiring from active life. His father was a blacksmith in Ohio, but when the family came to Iowa, when Mr. Bowermaster was about four years old, he became a merchant in Trenton. The family lived there until 1868, when they moved to a farm six miles northwest of Fairfield. In 1868 he took up carpentry, pursuing that trade continuously since except when he held public office for seven years. When is (sic) four boys grew up, all of them became carpenters, too, although some of them forsook the trade for other employment.

He married Miss Margaret Gow February 3, 1876. They had six children--Bert, who was killed by an auto west of Fairfield, December 17, 1929; Claude a Fairfield barber; Maude, who died twenty years ago; Earl, who lives in Rock Island; Fred, superintendent of mails at the Fairfield post office, and Charles, who died in Waukesha, Wisconsin, May 8, 1930. Mrs. Bowermaster died in 1892, and later Mr. Bowermaster married Mrs. Mary Hiatt Jones. Her daughter, Bessie Jones, eighteen months at the time of their marriage, and Mrs. Pauline Bond Wells, adopted when she was four years old, have been reared in their home.

Mr. Bowermaster is a Methodist and an Odd Fellow, a member of the Encampment.