Roseland Cottage

Henry Chandler Bowen

Henry Chandler Bowen was born in rural Woodstock, Connecticut, in 1813. He moved to New York City when he was twenty to work for successful merchants Lewis and Arthur Tappan. At the end of his clerkship for the Tappan brothers, Bowen and another employee started a dry goods business (Bowen & McNamee) specializing in silks, fine ribbons, laces, and trims. By 1844, their new venture was a success. Once established financially, thirty-year-old Henry married nineteen-year-old Lucy Maria, the daughter of his former employer Lewis Tappan. Their first child was born in 1845, the same year they began construction of Roseland Cottage as a summer home in Woodstock. Lucy had ten children with Henry before she died of childbirth complications in 1863. Two and a half years later,  Henry married Ellen Holt and their only son was born in 1868. Bowen, a founder and publisher of the New York weekly newspaper “The Independent,” an abolitionist and reformer, and an entrepreneur, died in 1896.