This barber shop is said to have been located at the location of the current Escambia Drug. This photo dates to before 1910.
As mentioned last week, Ms. Annie Bowman was a well educated and prolific local writer. The earliest newspapers of our section give notice to her on a regular basis, when, as a young lady, she made many of the social events of our area.
Brewton's Pine Belt News noted a "School Entertainment At Canoe," in their March 13, 1902 edition. "A rare musical treat and enjoyable literary feast and many hearty laughs were in store for the listeners on that occasion. Our musicians, Mrs. Fannie Brock, and sister, Miss Annie Bowman, and Miss Bessie Hall, with mandolin and violin and Miss Mattie Hall at the organ, did well their parts in entertaining the visitors," noted the writer.
As to the Canoe School's top educator, Prof. Allen Page, the paper stated, "Prof. Page untiringly instructed the older pupils during the school term. Where there are good schools there is a high order of civilization, and with civilization of the proper kind is Christianity, and with Christianity prosperity and happiness. This is man's chief aim, both for the present and for the future."
In the December 1903 edition of the Pine Belt News, Miss Bowman, along with Frank and John Dawson of Wawbeek, attended a temperance lecture at the school. Apparently, this was part of the decades long public relations build up to the Prohibition Amendment to the United States Constitution.
By 1910, Miss Bowman had completed her studies to become an educator. The Brewton Standard Gauge held, in their December 8, 1910 edition, "Miss Annie Bowman, who is conducting a successful school at Pollard, was in the city (Brewton) Saturday." Perhaps Miss Bowman made it back to Brewton Monday night, December 12th, when the 'Talkalog and Moving Picture Show' made its debut at the Brewton Bargain House at 7pm.
Several Baldwin County newspapers recount Mrs. Bowman teaching in the area during the early 1920s.Yet by 1930, census records show her back in the Canoe area, this time as a writer for the Works Progress Administration where she wrote profiles on residents and received a monthly check from the Federal government for $46 for her efforts. Last week this columnist mentioned her writings on the McQueens of the Wawbeek area.
Ms. Bowman also wrote an interesting piece on W.R. Holly, an Atmore mayor. She titled it, "Mayor W. R. Holly Saved the Town of Atmore."
Her article notes, "Mayor W. R. Holly of Atmore was born and reared at Abbeville, Alabama." He was sixty years old at the time Ms. Bowman wrote her story.
In 1909, according to the article, Mr. Holly and his wife, Ruth, left Brewton and moved to Atmore where he went into the drug store business. He owned the Escambia Drug Store for years. He later sold it "at a big profit," and retired for awhile. He later opened another drug store across the railroad tracks from the Escambia. He found the business confining so he sold out and bought farm and city property with the profit. He built a row of business houses in the northern part of town which was called Holly Block. He also ran a business selling mules and horses to local farmers.
"It is harder to take care of the money you make than it is to make it," stated Holly. Bowman wrote that Holly did not think the town administration was efficient enough for his likings, so he ran for mayor.
According to Bowman, Holly was mayor during the Depression. "When he took office, the town was something like the country before Roosevelt went into office. It was badly in debt and things were getting worse. He began to clean up the waste and prepare for better government."
Bowman noted that Mayor Holly made substantial payments on old accumulated debts, the city treasury showed a $10,000 surplus during this era and a new city hall was built in 1936, at a cost of $10,000. The building stands facing the railroad in the center of town and is a testament to his stewardship.
Holly had seven miles of streets paved in 1936 and twenty miles of sidewalks were laid, mostly with city funds, according to the Bowman profile.
Annie Bowman wrote this story in 1940. The same year she is listed as living on Horner Street in Atmore. She stated her occupation as a writer for the WPA; that she worked 44 weeks in the last year and that she completed two years of college. She was living with her sister Fannie Brock, sixty-two years of age, and Fannie's husband William Brock, age eighty-two.
The record appears void as to whether Ms. Bowman ever married. Her life appears to have sprung and blossomed across an early golden age of our section during which prosperity and agriculture grew by great bounds and which did not know the two world wars and the Great Depression which loomed over the horizons to come.
One can imagine an older Annie Bowman, reflecting from her porch rocker on Horner Street; remembering friends from the old Canoe School, people she interviewed and family which had past on as her own life slipped away slowly into the foggy haze of time.
Annie passed on July 18, 1966 and is buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Atmore. When out and about visiting the cemetery, stop and pay a visit to this interesting lady who helped preserve the memory of some of our most enduring residents.
Coming soon: Shadows and Dust III-view the trailer on Canoe Civic Club's Facebook Page.
