"...Great-grandfather Benjamin had for a long time been tending his brother John's mill, in fact since he was 18 years old, till about 1842 when he moved over to Kanawha County, in the wes tern part of the state, now West Virginia. From Kanawha County he went to Cabell County, farther west and bordering on the Ohio and Guayandotte Rivers, to the mill owned by one Mr. Doosenberry, at or near Bloomingdale, but now known as Barborsville.
From here the family moved by boat in November 1857 down the Ohio River from Guayandotte to Cairo, Illinois, and up the Mississippi River to Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Only the three younger children now remained at home, though the two older girls, now married, came with thei r husbands and children at the same time to Missouri and settled in Cape Girardeau County. These sons-in-law were John Chapman, a cooper by trade, and Thomas Henley, a blacksmith.
Benjamin LeRoy (Lee), the oldest living son, at this time preceded them to Missouri and married Miss Eliza Ford, and it was he who was instrumental in getting all the remainder of the family to emigrate to Missouri, where his father Benjamin had a position in a flour mill at Jackson, Missouri, awaiting him, as he had been brought up at milling from his 10th year.
He and his wife united with the Old Bethel Baptist Church (Note: March 1858 according to the Minute Book of Old Bethel Church, along with their daughters Elizabeth Mary Hanley and Lucy Ann Chapman) one and a half miles south of Jackson, of which a Mr. Canterberry was the past or. Here his children attended with them at many services in this historic old church. (Note: This was the Rev. John Canterberry, maternal grandfather of Eliza Jane Ford.)
When the War Between the States came on, the mill at Jackson was burned and he moved to what is now Burfordville to look after the estate of the Daugherty brothers, farm and mill, but the mill had also been burned by Federal soldiers. After a few years, he moved up to the Greable mill some miles above Millersville on the Whitewater and from there, after the war, to a house on the Farmington Road, then to Pocahontas, where for years he had charge of the Pocahontas mill owned by S. M. Green and later by John D. Hatcher. Finally in 1872, he moved to Wilkinson's mill on Apple Creek in Perry County where on April 18, 1873, he died of pneumon ia and was buried in old Apple Creek Cemetery at Pocahontas, age 69 years and three months.
He was a Southern man and a Democrat of the old school until the day of his death..."
So it appears that the elder Benj Bowman likely was located along some of Sam Hildebrands favorite trailways and may very well have known the Hildebrand family from his milling connections prior to the war.
Thomas Henley appears to have deserted in early 1863 from Little Rock Arkansas being listed in Clarks Regiment MO Infantry. I don't have a status on the other son in law John Chapman regarding civil war service.
Cheers
John R.