Wheeler S. Bowen Biography


	This biography appears on pages 1747-1748 in "History of South 
	Dakota" by Doane Robinson, Vol. II (1904) and was scanned, 
	OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net.

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	WHEELER S. BOWEN, who is at the present time editor of the Sioux 
Falls Press and a member of the firm of Dotson & Bowen, publishers of 
the same, was born in Akron, Summit county, Ohio, on the 8th of April, 
1843, being a son of Hiram and Martha (Wheeler) Bowen, who removed to 
Jonesville, Wisconsin, when he was a lad of six years, the father there 
becoming editor of the Janesville Gazette, of which he was part owner. 

	The subject received his early educational discipline in the 
common schools of Janesville, and as a boy began to work about his 
father's printing office, the training afforded in this line having been 
consistently designated as equal to a liberal education, and so it 
eventually proved in the case of Mr. Bowen. In the second year of the 
Civil war his patriotism was roused to responsive and definite protest, 
and in August, 1862, he enlisted as a private in the Twelfth Battery of 
Wisconsin Light Artillery, with which he served until the close of the 
war, making the record of a valiant and loyal son of the republic whose 
integrity he thus aided in perpetuating, while the history of his 
battery is the history of his service in the great conflict. His command 
was assigned to the Army of the Tennessee, commanded in turn by Generals 
Grant, Sherman, McPherson and Howard, and he was a participant in all 
the campaigns of said army after the time of his enlistment. Mr. Bowen 
received his honorable discharge in May, 1865, and then returned to his 
home in Janesville, where he became a compositor in the office of the 
Gazette, later being made foreman of the office and finally city editor 
of the paper, with whose publication his honored father was long 
identified. In the spring of 1874 Mr. Bowen accepted the position of 
Rock Island editor for the Davenport Gazette, retaining this incumbency 
a few months, after which he returned to Janesville and was married. In 
November of that year, in company with his bride, Mr. Bowen came to the 
territory of Dakota and located in the city of Yankton, where be became 
associated with George W. Kingsbury, Sr., in the purchase of the Yankton 
Press and Dakotan, and he thereafter continued to be in editorial charge 
of that paper during the major portion of the time until 1896, covering 
a period of nearly a quarter of century. In the year mentioned he went 
to Washington, D. C., to assume the office of clerk of the senate 
committee on Indian affairs, remaining in the federal capital until 
1901, in July of which year he located in Sioux Falls and purchased the 
Sioux Falls Press, C. L. Dotson being admitted to partnership a few 
months later. They have since conducted the Press as an independent 
paper, the same having both daily and weekly editions. During the 
campaign of 1896 Mr. Bowen was editor of the Sioux Falls Daily Journal, 
and in the connection ably supported Bryan for the presidency, while 
during the campaign of 1900 he edited the Press as an exponent of the 
interests of the same party and presidential candidate. He is staunch 
Democrat and has been one of the leader of the party contingent in South 
Dakota, during and since the campaign of 1896. While a resident of 
Yankton he served six years as postmaster of the city, having been twice 
appointed to this office, and once removed because of a change in the 
politics of the administration. 

	On the 21st of June, 1874, in Janesville, Wisconsin, Mr. Bowen was 
married to Miss Ella S. Davis, daughter of Jerome Davis, a well-known 
citizen of that place, and they have one son, George H., who is now a 
student in the Sioux Falls high school.