Benjamin Franklin Bowen

Benjamin Franklin Bowen is credited as the author of America Discovered by the Welsh in 1170 A.D., published in Philadelphia by J. B. Lippincott in 1876. The book argues that Welsh voyagers, associated with the medieval legend of Prince Madoc, reached North America centuries before Columbus.

The work sits in a long tradition of 19th-century historical speculation, blending folklore, patriotic interest, and attempts to gather documentary support for a disputed idea. Whatever readers make of its claims today, Bowen's book remains a window into how earlier writers tried to reshape the story of exploration and national origins.

Reliable biographical details about Bowen himself are hard to confirm from the sources reviewed here, so it is safest to let the surviving book speak for him. For many modern readers, his name endures mainly through this single, unusual title, which has stayed in circulation through digital archives and reprints.