Samuel Bowles was an American proprietor, publisher, reporter, editor, compositor, pressman, and business manager. He is most noted for the establishment of the weekly Republican.
Background
Samuel Bowles was born on June 8, 1797, in Hartford, Connecticut. He was the son of a pewterer of Boston whose business had been ruined by the Revolution and who had removed to the former city in 1798, opening first a bakery and later a grocery.
The father became a cripple and his means were slender; dying in 1813, he left Bowles as his only inheritance a watch and the family Bible.
Education
The boy, who had finished his common school education and gone into the grocery shop at fifteen, was now apprenticed to a printer. During this apprenticeship, Samuel joined with a dozen other youths in forming a literary and debating club, which gave him a taste for intellectual pursuits. This connection, he wrote later.
Career
His first employment as printer was with the New Haven Register, where he rose to be foreman. In 1819, he formed a partnership with John Francis of Wethersfield in publishing the Hartford Times, an unsuccessful weekly sheet. His associate was intemperate and incompetent, he fell into debts which it took him many years to discharge, and constant overwork impaired his health.
More than two years later, in 1824, the Hartford Times having failed, he loaded his wife, his baby daughter, a hand printing press which he had hired, and some household goods upon a flatboat, and ascended the Connecticut River to establish a new weekly in Springfield, Massachussets. Bowles took this step at the invitation of some Springfield Anti-Federalists, who helped him obtain loans aggregating $400 for the purchase of type and other equipment.
The first issue of the Springfield Republican appeared on September 8, 1824, with about 250 subscribers at $2 a year.
In the next fifteen years, the weekly Republican grew steadily but slowly. At one time it had as many as five rivals, while it also had to meet the competition of New York and Boston papers. But it crushed or absorbed the other local weeklies, while its thorough system of local intelligence gradually made it indispensable to readers of western Massachusetts.
Bowles in 1824, supported William H. Crawford for the presidency and opposed John Quincy Adams. Four years later, however, distrusting Jackson for his autocratic temper, he stood behind Adams for reelection. Throughout Jackson's administration, Bowles kept the Republican in the opposition, advocating the election of Clay in 1832 and being identified with the Whig party from the moment of its birth.
By the beginning of the forties, the Republican had 1, 200 subscribers, printed fourteen or fifteen columns of the newsweekly, and was ready for expansion. After the completion of the Boston & Albany Railroad in 1839, Springfield grew rapidly as a manufacturing and railway center.
In 1842, Bowles publicly proposed the establishment of a daily edition, but was dissuaded by business friends from this risky undertaking as there was then no daily paper in Massachusetts outside of Boston, and but one in Connecticut. But the elder of Bowles's surviving sons, Samuel Bowles, Jr. , urged his father not to abandon the plan and promised to assume the main responsibility. The first issue of the daily Republican appeared March 27, 1844, an evening paper of four small pages.
At the end of two years, it had only two hundred subscribers, and not until after its transformation, in December 1845, into a morning paper, did it gain an air of permanency. The basis of its prosperity, and of the future power of the Republican, was the organization by the two Bowleses of a local correspondence which thoroughly covered every town and hamlet of the upper Connecticut valley.
Bowles died from his dysenteric affection in 1851.
Achievements
Politics
Throughout Jackson's administration Bowles kept the Republican in the opposition, advocating the election of Clay in 1832 and being identified with the Whig party from the moment of its birth.
His position upon slavery was that of most Massachusetts Whigs; he deplored the agitation of the question and assailed the Abolitionists, but opposed the spread of the institution and attacked the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War. But in these years the editorial vigor and the influence of the Republican were slight.
Views
He insisted upon complete editorial independence and late in life boasted that he had rejected "with scorn" several alluring offers of financial aid if he would permit others to use his journal.
Quotations:
"I consider an important era in my life a sort of redeeming season, saving me from dangerous tendencies. It gave a good direction to my habits, strengthening my mind to resist temptation, and led me to prefer mental to sensual pleasure. "
Personality
An attack of typhus which prostrated him for the greater part of a year also left him subject to recurrent attacks of dysentery throughout life.
Quotes from others about the person
"It must be owned by one who reads the first numbers that one man might have produced it all without any dangerous strain on his powers. "
Connections
On February 12, 1822, Bowles married Huldah Deming of Wethersfield, a descendant of Miles Standish, who matched his hard sense, frugality, and industry with similar qualities of her own.