Catherine Drinker Bowen 1897-1973

One of my favorite historians is Mrs. Catherine Drinker Bowen; she penned marvelous biographies as well as an inspiring account of the American Constitutional Convention.  She researched her topics meticulously and passionately, searching for the story amidst facts, the narrative within the details. This year, I used her work, John Adams and the American Revolution to expand my lecture about Adams' role in the defense of the British soldiers following the Boston Massacre.  She took us all back to a Boston hostile to these "redcoats." I read much of her account to the class, and they loved it!

Mrs. Bowen fell under quite a bit of criticism because she did not pursue formal training (college degrees in History).  Yet, she was dedicated to both history and historiography. She knew where her interpretations of events and lives fell within the spectrum of others.  Like Barbara Tuchman and Esther Forbes, she did not pursue "women's history." My advisor, Professor Kermit Hall, gently admonished us that we needed more women historians, not women doing women's History.  He was so right!

As for Mrs. Bowen and her generation,  I want to say that as a student of history independent of a particular graduate program, she was free to really search for History as opposed to a "usable past" to promote a specific agenda.  In her day just as in the current, History represents a field with one of the most liberal and manipulative mindsets.  The recent trend is to tear down those that may have brought some "exceptionalism" to our past (the left does however always seem to give Jefferson a pass, though, despite his slave holdings and despite the fact that he ran and hid when the British came to Virginia!).  This past week, our family went to Barnes and Noble. I was thrilled to see a new biography of Ethan Allen. The review on the back made mention of how this marvelous new biography (I am paraphrasing) told us all of the failings of this once-revered character from the Revolutionary era.  Is that the goal? The goal should be providing an accurate (as much as possible) account of biography, and that might well sling a bit of dirt. However, that goal is a far cry from tearing down to tear down.

I am grateful for my education at UF in the History Department there, but sometimes I think the field is hurt by what and how we're taught--not the facts, but the agenda. Mrs. Bowen and her generation of true historians seem to be lost, relegated to the now-disappearing shelves of library books written before 1990. Barbara, Esther and Catherine all have their places on my shelves, and believe me, no dust is gathering.