I have been working on this for you for awhile and could find nothing myself, but have some other response for you now.

Dr. Tucker could be contacted and asked for some 1st hand proof of that report or at least what source he used for it.

I have heard from two individuals who wish to remain unnamed and not quoted directly other then for me to say they are both Civil War authors and historians with some detailed work on the General and his wife. I got interested in him some time back when I visited the old Walton Plantation house that Gen. Bowen died in SE of Vicksburg. His wife was present at the time I hear. It has since blown down and probably no sign of it now?

I heard that Mary had two kids at home and why would a mother leave them to go fight? Neither of the above sources has ever run across any report from the kids, or any other source, of this happening. It sort of like the CSA soldier in a battle who was shot in a testicle, the ball then hit a woman on her porch nearby, she got pregnant and had his baby. The legend is so much better then the fact that the legend becomes fact at times. Often the family are the ones who make it so as they want it to be true.

Unless you get some good proof, take this story with a large grain of salt....

My g.grandfather's regiment, 4th MN Inf, was the largest Union regt in that fight at Allatoona. Nothing said in the regt. history book of 1892 that I have a copy of.