BOWMAN, Thomas, M. E. bishop, born near Berwick, Columbia County, Pennsylvania, 15 July, 1817. He was educated at Wilbraham academy, Massachusetts, at Cazenovia seminary, New York, and at Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he was graduated in 1837. After studying law at Carlisle for a year, lie entered the ministry in the Baltimore conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1839. From 1840 to 1843 he taught in the grammar school of Dickinson College, and in 1848 organized Dickrosen seminary at Williamsport, Pennsylvania, over which• he presided for ten years, and became distinguished as a pulpit orator. In 1858 he was elected president of Indiana Asbury University at Greencastle. He was chaplain of the United States senate in 1864-'5, and continued to preside over the Indiana Asbury University till May, 1872, when he became a bishop. In 1878 he visited, officially, the missions of the Methodist Episcopal church in Europe and India.