BOWEN, Thomas M., senator, born in Iowa, near the present site of Burlington, 26 October 1835. He was admitted to the bar at the age of eighteen, and began practice in Wayne County, where he was elected to the legislature in 1856. In 1858 he removed to Kansas. In June 1861, he joined the volunteer army as captain, and subsequently he raised the 13th Kansas infantry and commanded it until the end of the war, receiving the brevet of Brigadier-General, and having command of a brigade during the last two years of hostilities on the frontier, and afterward with the 7th army corps. He was a delegate from Kansas to the national republican convention of 1861. After the war he settled in Arkansas and was president of the constitutional convention of that state, and for four years a justice of the state Supreme Court. In 1871 he accepted the appointment of governor of Idaho territory, but resigned, returned to Arkansas, and was a candidate for United States senator in opposition to S. W. Dorsey, of the same party, who defeated him in an open contest before the legislature. In January 1870, he removed to Colorado, and restored the practice of the law. When the state government was organized in 1876, he was elected a district judge, and was four years on the bench. He afterward engaged largely in mining operations. In 1882 he was elected to the state legislature, and served as chairman of the committee of ways and means, until he was elected to the United States senate, where he took his seat on 3 December 1883.