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.