Bowdle, William James

Life Span
to
Dickinson Connection
Class of 1854
    Full name
    William James Bowdle
    Place of Birth
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Slave State
    No. of Spouses
    1
    Family
    Amos Bowdle (father)
    Education
    Dickinson (Carlisle College)
    Other
    Other Education
    University of Maryland Medical School
    Occupation
    Doctor, Dentist or Nurse
    Military
    Union Navy

    William James Bowdle (Dickinson Chronicles)

    Scholarship
    William James Bowdle was born the son of Amos Bowdle and his wife in Church Creek, Maryland on October 8, 1834. He entered the Dickinson Grammar School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in September 1849 and then joined the undergraduate class of 1854 a year later. His classmates remember "Billy" as the fun-loving and well-liked center for mischief on the campus. He was elected to the Belles Lettres Society and graduated with his class. He then went on to study medicine, gaining his degree in Baltimore in 1856.

    He removed to Kansas with the determination to help the territory become a slave-holding state but returned somewhat disillusioned in 1859 to Baltimore. He gave up his practice and enlisted in the United States Navy as a surgeon in 1861; he served for a time as hospital surgeon at the naval hospital on Hilton Head , South Carolina. Following the war, he returned to Dorchester County and practiced medicine there until his death.

    While in Kansas, he had married a Southern women. Nothing further is known of his family life. William James Bowdle died at his home in Church Creek, Maryland on August 1, 1876. He was forty-one years old.
    John Osborne and James W. Gerencser, eds., “William James Bowdle,” Dickinson Chronicles, http://chronicles.dickinson.edu/encyclo/b/ed_bowdleWJ.htm.

    William James Bowdle (Dickinson Alumni Record)

    Reference
    *Bowdle, William James     Born October 8, 1834, at Church Creek, Md.; 1854, A. B.; 1856, M. D., Baltimore; 1856-58, practiced medicine in Kansas; 1858, returned to Baltimore; 1861, surgeon, United States Navy; hospital surgeon at Hilton Head, S. C.; 1865-76, practiced medicine in Dorchester county, Md.; B. L. society. Died Aug. 1, 1876, at Church Creek, Md.
    George Leffingwell Reed, ed., Alumni Record: Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA: Dickinson College, 1905), 154.
    How to Cite This Page: "Bowdle, William James," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/5148.