John Eddowes Bowman the Elder (1785-1841), was a banker and naturalist from the United Kingdom.

Background

Bowman was born 30 October 1785 at Nantwich, where his father, Eddowes Bowman (1758-1844), was a tobacconist. His education was only that of a grammar school, but he was a bookish boy, and got from his father a taste for botany, and from his friend Joseph Hunter (1783-1861), then a lad at Sheffield, a fondness for genealogy. He was at first in his father's shop, and became manager of the manufacturing department, and traveller. He wished to enter the ministry of the Unitarian body to which his family belonged, but his father dissuaded him. In 1813 he joined, as junior partner, a banking business on which his father entered. Its failure in 1816 left him penniless, and he became manager at Welshpool of a branch of the bank of Beck & Co. of Shrewsbury. In 1824 he became managing partner of a bank at Wrexham, and was able to retire from business in 1830. From 1837 he resided in Manchester, where he pursued many branches of physical science. He was a fellow of the Linnean and Geological Societies, and one of the founders of the Manchester Geological Society. His discoveries were chiefly in relation to mosses, fungi, and parasitical plants. A minute fossil, which he detected in Derbyshire, is named from him the 'Endothyra Bowmanni.' In the last years of his life he devoted himself almost entirely to geology. He died on 4 Dec. 1841.

Works

He contributed papers to the Transactions of the Linnean and other learned societies, and also to London's Magazine of Natural History.

Family

He married, 6 July 1809, his cousin, Elizabeth (1788-1859), daughter of W. Eddowes of Shrewsbury. A daughter, married to George S. Kenrick, died in November 1838. Four sons survived him : 1. Eddowes Bowman

Eddowes Bowman

Eddowes Bowman , was a dissenting tutor.Bowman was the eldest son of John Eddowes Bowman the elder and Elisabeth, his cousin, was born at Nantwich on 12 Nov. 1810. He was educated chiefly at Hazelwood, near Birmingham, by Thomas Wright Hill, father of Sir Rowland Hill...

. 2. Henry Bowman

Henry Bowman (architect)

-Life:The second son of John Eddowes Bowman the Elder, he worked as an architect in Manchester. He died at Brockham Green, near Reigate, on 14 May 1883.-Works:...

. 3. Sir William Bowman, born 20 July 1816, the oculist. 4. John Eddowes Bowman the younger

John Eddowes Bowman the Younger

-Life:Bowman was the son of John Eddowes Bowman the elder, and brother of Sir William Bowman, physiologist and oculist, born at Welchpool on 7 July 1819. He was a pupil of John Frederic Daniell at King's College, London, and in 1845 succeeded William Allen Miller as demonstrator of chemistry there;...

, professor of chemistry