A Growing Family and Business

In 1854, the family moved into 76 Willow Street, Brooklyn Heights, their residence for the majority of the year. Lucy was likely focused on her six children, including baby Alice who was born in March. Henry Bowen’s interests broadened beyond his silk business. He and a number of Congregational leaders started The Independent newspaper in 1848, a publication they intended for transplanted New England Congregationalists. It soon became one of the nation’s leading abolitionist tracts. Henry recounts that he became an abolitionist in 1832 while still in Woodstock.  He established the Continental Insurance Company in 1853 and was an early member of the new Republican Party in New York.