Borden Parker Bowne - Personal Life

Personal Life

Bowne was one of six children of upright parents raised in rural New Jersey, near what is today called Atlantic Highlands. Notably, the father, Joseph Bowne was a Justice of the Peace, a farmer, a Methodist preacher and a vocal abolitionist at a time when such a stand was controversial. The mother was of a Quaker family and also an abolitionist. As a youth Bowne was able to observe the example of parents who were unbending on points of moral significance, and particularly regarding the dignity of all persons. Later Bowne was instrumental in supporting integration in higher education, and he presided over the dissertation of the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from a U.S. University, John Wesley Edward Bowen (1855-1933), in 1891. In demeanor and bearing Bowne was very formal, even with his own family members, business-like and orderly. He followed the manner of personal discipline from which the Methodists originally took their name.

Bowne entered New York University in 1867 amidst the swirling new controversy of Darwin’s evolutionary theory. Simultaneously in 1867 he was examined and licensed to preach in the Methodist Church. He worked his way through college employed at his uncle’s grocery in Brooklyn while preaching and pastoring part-time. He studied the standard curriculum and was graduated with the Bachelor of Arts in 1871. Bowne’s formal ordination as a Methodist deacon followed in 1872 and he was assigned a congregation of rural Long Island at Whitestone. In 1873 the opportunity came to continue his studies in Europe. He studied mainly at Paris, Halle, and Göttingen, being most deeply influenced at the last of these by the empirical strain of Kantian philosophy prevailing in that age under Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1817-1881). Bowne worked as a journalist in New York City from 1874 until 1876 when he completed the Master of Arts at New York University. He accepted a call to the philosophy department at Boston University in 1877, refusing in turn attractive offers from Yale and the new University of Chicago as his reputation grew. In 1888 Bowne became the first Dean of the Graduate School at Boston University and held that position until his death.