John Porter Bowman was born in 1816 in his grandparents’ tavern at Pierce’s Corner, Vermont, began working in tanneries in Rutland and New York at 15, opened Tannery Crossing in Cuttingsville in the 1840s, and acquired Stony Creek Tannery in New York in 1852. A Vermont legislator and successful businessman, he made his fortune selling leather goods to the U.S. government during the Civil War. Laurel Hall, an opulent Queen Anne style summer home designed by G.B. Croff, was built in 1882 across from the cemetery where Bowman’s family was interred; it featured a wrapping porch, 16-foot ceilings, polychromatic-arched formal rooms, an Eastlake-style stair, multi-hued windows, and modern amenities, and Bowman retired there in 1887. After the deaths of his daughters, Addie and Ella, and his wife, Jennie, Bowman had Laurel Glen Mausoleum erected. Designed by New York architect G.B. Croff in Classical and Egyptian inspired forms, and built over more than a year by 125 sculptors, granite and marble cutters, masons, and laborers, it included Giovanni Turini’s sculpted grieving figure of Bowman, described as unique in American funerary art. The three caskets were interred in 1881, Bowman was buried there in 1891, and the Laurel Glen Cemetery Association was formed in 1894 to maintain the trust he created for the perpetual care of the estate exactly as he left it, a provision that gave rise to the legend that he believed in reincarnation.

Photo: Dennis Gilkenson

Photo: Dennis Gilkenson

Photo: Dennis Gilkenson

Photo: Dennis Gilkenson

Photo: Dennis Gilkenson

Shrewsbury, Vermont · USA