Clarence Winthrop Bowen was an American author of historical essays. He was a journalist for the New York Herald Tribune in 1874. That year, he inherited The Independent from his father, and he was its publisher until 1913 when he retired.
Biography
Clarence Winthrop Bowen was born in Brooklyn, New York on May 22, 1852. His father was Henry Chandler Bowen, member of dry goods firms of Bowen & McNamee and Bowen, Holmes & Company, NYC, and his mother Lucy Maria Tappan, daughter of Lewis and Suzanna Tappan of Brooklyn. Lewis Tappan joined the Abolitionism movement. Clarence Winthrop Bowen was a direct descendant, on his father's side, from the Apostle Eliot; on his mother's side, he was a great-grand nephew of Benjamin Franklin. He was the elder brother of John Eliot Bowen, American author. was built in 1846 in Gothic Revival style as the summer home of Henry Chandler Bowen and family Bowen's father was the founder of The Independent in 1848, and subsequently sole owner and editor; Henry Chandler Bowen was the son of George and Lydia Wolcott Bowen, of Woodstock. Roseland Cottage, also known as Henry C. Bowen House, is a historic house located on Route 169 in Woodstock, Connecticut. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1992. Clarence Winthrop Bowen was a private tutor. In his freshman year at Yale, he won third prize at the Brothers in Unity Freshman debate. In his junior year, he was awarded first prize at the Junior debate and second prize for dispute appointment. His senior year he won second prize for both colloquy appointment and English composition. He was on his Class Cup Committee; member Kappa Sigma Epsilon, Delta Beta Xi, Delta Kappa Epsilon, and Wolf's Head Society. , 1876 Clarence Winthrop Bowen attended Yale from 1869 to 1873, then after graduation he went to Yale Divinity School, but did not follow through and instead joined the Department of History earning a Master in 1876 and a Ph.D in 1882. Having completed his dissertation on The Boundaries of Connecticut, in 1882 Bowen was the first doctoral candidate to receive a Ph.D. in history. He married Roxana Atwater Wentworth on January 28, 1892 in Chicago. The following year, her veil was exhibited at the World's Fair in the city and is now at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The daughter of Marie Atwater and John Wentworth, she died on July 10, 1935. Bowen was the father of Roxana Wentworth Bowen, who married William Stephen Van Rensselaer in 1917, divorced in 1919, and in 1945, she married Sir George Gordon Vereker, the UK Ambassador to Finland and Uruguay, brother-in-law of John Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort. Bowen died due to a cerebral hemorrhage on November 2, 1935, in Woodstock, Connecticut, and is buried at Woodstock Hill Cemetery. According to his obituary he was a man whose "optimism was contagious and his faith in the future unchanged.... He had known intimately so many leaders of thought and action for half a century, that his conversation was filled with highly interesting reminiscence." Bowen's journals and scrapbooks are preserved at the American Antiquarian Society.
