Butte County
Biographies
NEHEMIAH BOWER
NEHEMIAH BOWER.--An Ohioan who has made
his influence felt since he settled in California, and
concerning whose record as a doughty soldier in the Civil War his many friends
are proud, is Nehemiah Bower, who first saw the light near Jefferson, in the
good old Buckeye State,
on June 30, 1838. His father was Joseph Bower, a native of Pennsylvania,
and a shoemaker by trade, who married in Ohio but
migrated in the fall of 1838 to Pike County, Ill. There
he was a farmer, located on timber land and hewed a farm out of the
woods. Nehemiah’s mother had been Rebecca Gates before her marriage, the
daughter of a Baptist preacher, who moved with his family to Illinois. In
1843, Joseph Bower died, the father of three children, only one of whom, the
second oldest, is living. A younger brother of Nehemiah, Edmond Bower, was
in the Civil War as member of the Eleventh Missouri Volunteer Infantry, and was
wounded at the first Battle of Corinth, and from these
wounds died on June 17, 1862. A second time Mrs. Bower married, her
husband being Henry Taylor, and one child blessed their union. Mr. Taylor
died and she married a third time, her last husband being Anson Gray; and Mr. and
Mrs. Gray became the parents of four children. He was an extensive farmer,
and the family moved onto their comfortable farm.
Brought
up on a farm in Illinois, and
attending the public schools there Nehemiah remained home until he was sixteen,
when he pushed out into the world for himself. He worked on various farms,
and in the spring of 1857 removed to Brown County,
Kans., where he located on a hundred sixty
acres of government land which he improved; so that by the time he was
twenty-one years of age he had paid off everything that he owed and received a
deed for his property. This was situated three miles north of Hiawatha,
and there he remained until the summer of 1860, when he returned to Illinois,
and for a year worked on farms.
In
1861, he volunteered as a member of Company I, of the Eleventh Missouri
Regiment, Volunteer infantry, and on August 5 was mustered in at Bethel,
Ill. The captain found that the Illinois
quota was met, so he took his company to St. Louis and
joined the Eleventh Missouri Regiment at Cape Girardeau. The
next spring Mr. Bower served under General Pope, and was one of the brave laddies sent south to reinforce the Union troops after the
Battle of Shiloh. He also saw important service for three months or more
in caring for the wounded at Farmington
Hospital, and he was especially
privileged to nurse his own brother, in the capacity of hospital nurse, an
assignment he appreciated, for the badly wounded fellow died on June
17. At the breaking up of the hospital he rejoined his company, and soon
after participated in the expedition under Grant down the Ohio
and Mobile Railroad to Oxford,
Miss. Then he went to Memphis and contributed his
share to the siege of Vicksburg,
helping to complete the canal, which was designed for encircling the
fortification. After various skirmishes, he returned with his regiment to Vicksburg,
and from the 19th to the 22nd of May, 1863, took part in
the grand charge. Later, he entered the city with General Grant, and there
remained until 1864. In the spring of that year he was in the Red River
campaign, and on August 5, 1864, was mustered out at Memphis. As
a memento of his service he has a tin box he took from the knapsack of a Georgia
soldier, also a linen towel.
On
his return home, Mr. Bower rented a farm and followed agriculture till the fall
of 1865, when he returned to Kansas. There
he improved his place, and in 1867 traded it for a quarter section of
unimproved land, about a mile west of Hiawatha. In the fall off 1867 Mr.
Bower took his most important step in setting out for California
by way of Panama; and arriving here he
farmed for a while in Yolo County
and afterward in Sacramento County. For
two years he raised hops, and when these declined in the market he lost
out. He then traveled with his team and wagon for a year, and finally
brought up in Yolo County. In
1882, he came to Butte County,
hired out as a farm hand, and so continued until on account of ill-health, he
retired.
An
active Republican and full of patriotic ardor, Mr. Bower now makes his
headquarters in Oroville, surrounded by his many friends, and in particular by
his comrades in the William T. Sherman Post, No.96, G. A. R., of Oroville.
Transcribed by Louise E. Shoemaker, November 30th
2007.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 526-527, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
©
2007 Louise
E. Shoemaker.
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