Our Ancestor from Germany

 Jane Judd Bowman & John Boman/Bowman

John's Story

pictures from Descendants of John & Matilda Judd

from History of Shiawassee and Clinton Counties [Michigan], 1880

(in Google Books)

JOHN BOMAN

 

John Boman was born April 18, 1831, in Bavaria, Germany, and traces his ancestry among the wealthy representative people of their time, and is the only member of that family who has adopted this country as a home, excepting a nephew, Godfritz Happ, who accompanied Mr. Bowman on his return to America from a visit to his native land. At the breaking out of the German Rebellion, in 1848, Mr. Boman was drafted to serve in King Ludwig’s army of Bavaria for a period of six years. Soon after joining the command to which he was assigned, the entire regiment forsook the king’s cause and joined the revolutionists. After a brief struggle they were compelled to seek safety in another land. Still following the fortunes of his leaders, Hecker, Carl Schurz, Sigel, and others more prominently known in this country, he came to America, arriving in New York, Aug. 1 1850, a stranger in a strange land, with only one dollar, one-half the sum of his available possession. He came to Buffalo, N.Y., where he succeeded in finding employment at four dollars per month, and continued in that vicinity for a period of four years, when with his accumulated wages he purchased eighty acres of his present property. 

            The following year he came to Michigan, working at lumbering and also making some small improvements upon his farm. On July 19, 1857, he married Miss Jane M. Judd, the history of whose family is given in this work. Together they began the labor of subduing the forest and establishing a home. We need not comment upon their success further than by calling attention to the view of their home presented in this work. In politics Mr. Bowman was Democratic, but at the breaking out of the Rebellion enlisted in the Second Michigan Cavalry, participating in several small engagements, and was discharged with the regiment, thoroughly convinced that the party and principle that had so successfully closed the struggle should be sustained, and when elections occur a straight ticket can be counted upon from him. 

            Mr. Boman is not a church member, but favors the Methodist Episcopal Society, of which Mrs. Boman is a member, and has been since her girlhood days. Together they have contributed largely to the building up and sustaining that institution in their vicinity. The family consists of six children, - Louisa and Alice, dying in infancy; Matilda, born Oct. 2, 1858, wife of A. Campbell, and resides in Saginaw; Charles, born Sept. 23, 1867; Ida A., born April 9, 1869; Jamie, born Dec. 8, 1877.