Bowie, Washington

Washington Bowie was born at the Hermitage Plantation in Frederick County, Maryland, on 12 August 1776. Bowie was the third son of Allen Bowie Jr. and Ruth Cramphin and had seven siblings. From a young age, Bowie studied mercantile business under William Deakin in Georgetown, and co-opened a mercantile firm, Bowie and Kurtz, with John Kurtz in 1799 at twenty-three years old. That same year, Bowie married the widow Margaret Crabb Johns Chew. The couple had seven children born between 1800 and 1811.  

Bowie lived and worked in Georgetown for the vast majority of his life. He built a residence between 1799 and 1810, today known as the Bowie-Sevier Houe, which still stands on Q Street. By 1820, Bowie kept six enslaved individuals at this residence. Bowie and Kurtz became a very successful mercantile business, their main shipping vessel being the Citizen, captained by a man named Dodge and operating primarily between Alexandria and Lisbon. Bowie and Kurtz also owned at least one warehouse and handled a variety of goods including furs, wines, Merino sheep, crops, fruit, and salt. In 1810, the Annapolis Gazette spoke of Bowie as “a merchant prince” and referred to him as one of the wealthiest and most public-spirited citizens of Georgetown. Bowie appeared in the Mason family account book multiple times for his purchases of wheat and flour from Hugh Douglas. 

After their ship Allegany “was seized and condemned at Gibralter,” among other financial setbacks, Bowie and Kurtz, along with other mercantile businesses, petitioned Congress for relief in 1814. The petition spent the next six years in committee until the Senate sent it to the committee of claims as a bill in February 1820. That same year, Bowie purchased approximately 2,000 acres in Montgomery County, Maryland, and established a country home there called Oatland Farm. Twelve enslaved people lived and worked on this property. Bowie began to decline financially, however, and the Senate committee reported unfavorably on Bowie and Kurtz’s petition. Though it reached the floors of both the House and Senate, it presumably did not pass, as Bowie subsequently “[closed] out his mercantile business” and “surrendered his large possessions to satisfy his creditors.” Bowie and his family moved to Oatland Farm permanently between 1820 and 1826.  

Washington Bowie died on 12 April 1826 at Oatland Farm at forty-nine years old. He was survived by his wife, Margaret, and six of their seven children. Margaret died in 1840. Bowie is buried in the Bowie Family Cemetery on the former lands of Oatland Farm alongside his wife, parents, two siblings, and five of his children.  

by Hayley Madl