Knights of the Golden Circle Series
Louisa Bowles, aka Eliza Carlin (1814- aft 1860)
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by Carolyn Ann Howard
Jonathan Lindley and his caravan were not the only people coming into Orange County, Indiana in the early 1800s. Another early settler of Paoli was William Augustus Bowles. He is not to be confused with his famous uncle of the same name, although they had much in common. They were both born in Maryland of privilege, and they both sought to form their own states that would be out of the control of the United States government or any other government.
In his lifetime, the younger Bowles would corruptly receive the rank of Colonel in the Mexican American war, in command of the Second Indiana Volunteer Regiment. Later, he would achieve the title of Major General in the Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC).
Bowles Family, Maryland Branch
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To understand the man Bowles, one must know of the family structure into which he was born. Bowles is a part of the Maryland branch.
William Bowles’ grandfather, Thomas Bowles, emigrated from England to the United States in 1758 and settled in Frederick County, Maryland.1 Thomas was well educated and apparently wealthy or possessed the means to acquire wealth, as he purchased a large plantation in Maryland.2 Thomas Bowles was father to at least a dozen children, three of whom were notable.
His eldest, William Augustus, was a loyalist to the crown during the Revolutionary War. Afterward, he collaborated with the Native Americans trying to form his own state that would have its own government. He aspired to be the state’s Director General. In reality, Bowles was nothing but a freeloader and a pirate: looting ships, stealing cargo, and torturing crew members.3 After forming a Seminole army to declare war on Spain in 1800, he was betrayed, arrested, and imprisoned. He died from starvation in 1805 at Castillo Morro in Cuba.4
Another son of Thomas was Evan Bowles. Evan became a surveyor for the government. He surveyed Louisiana, eventually purchased land there, and built a large sugar cane plantation. By the 1830 census, he owned 31 slaves.5
And finally, Thomas’s son Isaac would become the father of William Augustus Bowles, the founder of French Lick, Indiana, and the subject of this work. It was this William Augustus Bowles who became the Major General in the Knights of the Golden Circle.
Introducing: William A. Bowles
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William Augustus Bowles, the nephew, was born in 1799 in Frederick County, Maryland, the eldest son of Isaac Bowles and Mary Bagford. It is likely he was named for Isaac’s brother William Augustus, who in 1799 was at the height of his legendary popularity. When his parents moved west to Indiana, Bowles came with them and settled in Fredericksburg, Washington County, Indiana. The Bowles family were Tories, loyal to the crown before and during the Revolutionary War. After the war was won by the Americans, many Tories felt safer in the newer western territories.6
We know little of Bowles in Fredericksburg except that he was a physician by this time, and he had two daughters with his first wife Louisiana Ferguson. In 1820, he was indicted for grave robbing.7 On the surface this might seem grotesque. For a doctor, however, this was one of the only ways to secure a corpse for study. In 1838, Louisiana petitioned the court for a divorce, which was granted.8
Bowles is an enigma, a true jack-of-all-trades and perhaps master of none. He dabbled in the sale of liquor, was a medical doctor, a druggist, a politician, and even a pastor at one point. He was also in the hospitality business, having built the first French Lick, Indiana, hotel. One of his greatest accomplishments, however, may have been his marriage to his mysterious second wife. She came to Paoli as Eliza Carlin. Her real name, however, was Louisa Bowles, from Louisiana, and she was William Bowles’ first cousin.
It is interesting to note that William Bowles came from Frederick County, Maryland to Fredericksburg, Indiana. Also, his first wife’s name was Louisiana, and his second wife was born in Louisiana.
Introducing: Louisa Bowles (aka Eliza Carlin)
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Franklin, Louisiana, initially established as Carlin Settlement, was named after Benjamin Franklin and located in St. Mary Parish. It became the parish seat in 1811. It was here in 1814 that Louisa Bowles was born into the elite and powerful sugarcane planter class.
Louisa’s father was Evan Bowles, the Anglo-American surveyor turned sugarcane planter and uncle of William Augustus Bowles, of Paoli, Indiana. Louisa’s mother was an American born Frenchwoman named Dorothea Carlin. Dorothea’s father was Joseph Carlin, a French-born soldier, for whom the Carlin Settlement was named.
The French were there first, but the Anglo-Americans began to arrive shortly after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Although not particularly accepting of each other, they soon realized that, politically, their two cultures must meld in order for their political power to be retained. Therefore, the two cultures began to intermarry and intermingle.9 Joining together, the Anglo-Americans and French Creoles found that they could form significant unions to make their plantations large and powerful. An example is the intermarrying of the Duffel and Landry families. By their intermarrying, they together formed a large sugar conglomerate in Ascension Parish.10
Sugar cane was a tricky crop and cultivating it was a backbreaking job relegated to slaves. They prepared the ground each year for planting. After planting, because weeds grew quickly, the slaves weeded continually. Rats, who also loved sugar cane, had to be killed. After harvest, the cane was processed quickly, for it soon became useless. Slaves worked around the clock in 12-hour shifts. It was hot, dangerous work.11
When Louisa’s father, Evan Bowles, died in 1831, he left his plantation to his wife, Louisa’s mother, Dorothea, and to his only son, Thomas. His death also created a family emergency. Louisa needed a husband. Alexander Fields appeared seemingly out of nowhere, arriving in Franklin, Louisiana, from Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Louisa and Alexander were married.
In the 1840 census, Alexander is with Louisa and their two daughters. They had no slaves at the time of this census. Louisa’s brother, Thomas, who had no wife or children, was likely with his sister Eleanor, and her husband Simon Mathison as well as Dorothea. They had 49 slaves.
Thomas then died in 1841. He left his portion of the plantation to the sister, Eleanor, with whom he lived. The greater portion of the plantation, however, belonged to Dorothea, who was “interdicted,” meaning she was somehow impaired and unable to make legal decisions. Thomas, for some reason, left two different wills. One of the wills appointed his brother-in-law, Simon, as executor with Eleanor the sole heir. The other appointed his sister both sole heir and executrix. Alexander Fields jumped on this indiscretion in an attempt to make himself the inheritor of Thomas’ fortune. After a legal battle that left the judges incredulous, Alexander lost. In the final judgement, “…the assumption that the representative of the deceased partner can, at his pleasure, take the ownership and possession of the partnership property from the survivor, is unsustained by reason or authority.”12 At one point, Alexander even tried to go through Louisa to obtain the property. The outcome was the same: “He is there still, and cannot, by hanging to the skirts of the plaintiff, get into this court and assert his rights…” 13 In the end, the property was sold.
This was not the end of Alexander Fields and his seemingly unhappy marriage to Louisa Bowles, however. By 1843, less than two years after her brother, Thomas’ death, Louisa was married to William August Bowles in Paoli, Indiana, under the name of Eliza Carlin. On the plantation, Louisa would have had no say whatsoever in her future. With her father and only brother now deceased, her fate was in the hands of her uncles and husband. It may be that her uncle Honoré Carlin, her mother’s brother, paid a dowry to the only unmarried relative that would be willing to marry her and take her away. Indeed, Paoli, Indiana, was well over 900 miles from Franklin, Louisiana. At any rate, Louisa Bowles, now Eliza Carlin, would live out her life with William Augustus Bowles, until she divorced him right before her death.
Because sugar was in high demand, good sugarcane planters in Louisiana became quite wealthy. One such planter was Louisa Bowles’ first husband, Alexander Fields. By 1850, after he had divorced Louise, he had 27 slaves, was listed on the census as a planter, and had an overseer. He also owned $20,000 in real estate. He was married to his second wife now, with whom he lived, along with his two daughters from Louisa. Louisa’s mother, Dorothea was also in the household with Alexander. On the 1850 census, she was marked as “insane,” a blanket term used to describe many different sorts of maladies. It is quite possible that Honoré also cut some deal with Alexander for the care of his sister, Dorothea, and for the exile of his niece to Paoli.
2. Farquhar, Thomas M. The History of the Bowles Family. Philadelphia, 1907, p. 142. Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/historyofbowlesf00farq/ Accessed 17 Oct 2020
3. Pickett, Albert James. History of Alabama. Sheffield
Alabama: R.C. Randolph, 1896, p. 412. Google
eBook.
4. Farquhar, p. 172.
5. LaPorte, Tom. “Evan Bowles of St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana.” Evan Bowles of St. Mary’s Parish, Louisiana, 2018, www.bowlesfamilyhistory.ca/evan_bowles_of_st__marys_parish_louisiana.htm.
6. Morgan, Robert. Boone: A Biography. Algonquin Books: 2008, p. 283. Kindle download.
7. Goodspeed Brothers. History of Lawrence, Orange, and Washington Counties, Indiana: Higginson Book Company, 1884, p. 740. Google eBook.
8. Ibid, p. 748.
9. Russell, Sarah. “Intermarriage and Intermingling: Constructing the Planter Class in Louisiana's Sugar Parishes, 1803-1850.” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, vol. 46, no. 4, 2005, p. 415. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4234137. Accessed 23 Oct. 2020.
10. Ibid, p. 419.
11. “Enslaved People's Work on Sugar Plantations.” The Saint Lauretia Project, University of Glasgow, runaways.gla.ac.uk/minecraft/index.php/slaves-work-on-sugar-plantations/. Accessed 26 Oct 2020.
12. Robinson, Merritt. Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Louisiana. E. Johns & Co., 1843, -p. 42. Google eBook.
13. Ibid., p. 42.
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