James L. (James Lorenzo) Bowen

Born in Marlboro, Vermont, on April 2, 1842, he spent part of his childhood with his grandfather in Readsboro after his mother died when he was young. As a teenager he joined his father in North Adams, Massachusetts, learned work in the woolen mills, and later served in Company E of the 27th Massachusetts Infantry during the Civil War, where he was wounded at Gettysburg.

After the war, he became a journalist and editor in western Massachusetts and built a busy writing career. He wrote early adventure and frontier fiction for popular publishers, then became better known for historical and military works, including History of the Thirty-Seventh Regiment, Mass. Volunteers and the large reference volume Massachusetts in the War, 1861-1865.

He died in Springfield, Massachusetts, on September 23, 1919. Remembered both as a veteran and as an author, his work connects the fast-moving world of 19th-century popular fiction with the careful record-keeping of Civil War history.