Title |
Bowen, Lavinia |
Alternate title |
Bowen & Co. |
Date |
b. ca. 1820 |
Description |
Lavinia Bowen, born ca. 1820 in Maine and wife of preeminent Philadelphia lithographer John T. Bowen, operated the lithograph
firm Bowen & Company with ornithologist John Cassin after her husband's death in 1856. The newly-styled firm, left with an
estate worth about $5,500 from John T. Bowen, continued to operate from the southwest corner of Eleventh and Chestnut Streets
until 1866, when it relocated to 713 Jayne Street until 1872. John Cassin left the firm in 1867, and R. B. Jones appears as
a co-proprietor of Bowen & Co. in the 1868 Philadelphia directory.
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Lavinia was an artist, lithographer and plate colorist in her own right, presumably working on her husband's hand-colored
book plate projects, and later, natural history commissions including three folio bird books for Daniel Elliot and Henry Schoolcraft's
"Indian Tribes of North American." John Cassin praised her skills as an artist in ornithology in the "Proceedings of the Academy
of Natural Sciences" (1858), and named a bird, the Calliste Lavinia, in her honor.Lavinia married John T. Bowen before 1838,
the year their son, John T., was born in New York. From 1839 through the 1840s, they lived in Center City at 61 South Fifth
Street and later 96 Walnut Street and by 1855, resided at 674 Green Street above Spring Garden Street. After John's death
in 1856, Lavinia resided at 1020 Cherry Street until 1872.
|
Is part of |
Philadelphia on Stone Biographical Dictionary of Lithographers |
References |
See Bowen, John T. and Cassin, John. |
Call number |
Philadelphia on Stone Biographical Dictionary of Lithographers |
Bibliographic citation |
Census 1850 |
|
Groce & Wallace, 70-71 |
|
Last, 38-39 |
|
Pennsylvania, Vol. 11, p. 316, R.G. Dun & Co. Collection, microfilm, Hagley Museum & Library |
|
Philadelphia Business & City Directories, 1838-1872 (intermittently) |
|
Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, September 28, 1858, 178 |
|
WWWAA, 400 |