PREFACE to Redemption At Upper Marlboro by Dennis Campbell

PREFACE  –  Reproduced by Permission of Author  (Book Pages 9 Through 13)

PREFACE

The vast majority of events in this narrative were gleaned from an extended series of obscure and vividly descriptive newspaper accounts relating to the March 26, 1893, murder of Francis Magruder Bowie.   Mr. Bowie, a forty-five year-old wealthy farmer; his wife, Ida Hill Bowie; and their eight children lived on a prosperous 240-acre Southern Maryland farm. The unusually gruesome and bizarre slaying occurred in Prince George’s County, about four miles north of the small and remote village of Upper Marlboro.  Two local  “colored” farm workers were arrested by the county sheriff and charged with Mr. Bowie’s murder.  With one exception, no governmental records of the murder have survived the passage of time.  The exception, which was found in a 7th Judicial Circuit Court Docket Book of 1893, primarily relates to court administrative matters and contains no pertinent information relevant to the facts and circumstances of the criminal trial.(1)  This is also a story about a secluded rural community, its racial temperament, and the ongoing efforts certain people made to dispense rule of law justice.

As a retired law enforcement officer with more than 30 years of experience and a local history enthusiast, I found the story of Mr. Bowie’s murder to be a fascinating saga of Maryland’s late 19th century criminal justice system and the difficulties it encountered while attempting to assure that Mr. Bowie’s suspected killers received a fair and impartial judicial trial. 

Newspaper accounts relating to the murder investigation revealed an amazingly thorough criminal investigation and an incredibly quick prosecution of the accused murderers.  These news accounts also supplied a considerable amount of intriguing material about the peculiar idiosyncrasies of old-time Southern Maryland and its inherent desire for swift justice.

In recounting the story of Mr. Bowie’s death, I’ve made ample use of the time-period language and phraseology used by the newspaper correspondents who reported on the murder and its aftermath.  Most of the 1893 actual newspaper vernacular used in this narrative has been encapsulated in quotes or italics.  My intent in using the time-period news print phraseology was to replicate the events surrounding Mr. Bowie’s death in their 19th century context.  I have also included some newsprint sketches relating to the murder and some old-time photographs depicting the home-spun appearance of then-existing Upper Marlboro community.(2)    

Prince George’s County, at the time of Mr. Bowie’s death, was a sparsely populated racially segregated tobacco growing farming community deeply entrenched in the traditions and values of the Old South.  According to the 1890 census records, the 498-square-mile county had a racially diverse population of 14,867 white and 11,213 black inhabitants.(3)    The town of Upper Marlboro, although the county’s seat of government, was an out-of-the-mainstream remote village community that had remains virtually untouched by the urban influences of nearby Washington. D.C.  Unfamiliar faces on the town streets, except when the Circuit Court was in session and when the annual county fair was in progress, were a rare oddity in this secluded community.  Crime, on those rare occasions when it occurred, was usually minor in nature and quickly resolved within the confines of the existing law, or the prevailing community norms.

A 1981 issue of the now defunctPrince George’s Magazine contained a vividly descriptive article about the unsophisticated and frequently mundane nature of providing the early county with a contemporary law enforcement service.  The article describes the county as:

Mile after mile of tobacco, corn, timber forests, open pastures bordered with occasional patches of black-eyed susans,  low lying narrow roads running from the sleepy county seat at Upper Marlboro to the blue granite buildings of Bladensburg – this was the domain in which the sheriff served his court papers, arrested an incidental law breaker, kept the jail and sometimes rounded up a few head of stray cattle.

The wanton, brutal, and highly unusual killing of Frances M. Bowie occurred from within this normally calm and tranquil environment.  The murder – in fact, any murder occurring in isolated Southern Maryland during the late 19th century – was a rarity and therefore attracted as immense amount of public interest.

The responsibility for investigating Mr. Bowie’s murder fell upon the county sheriff, his deputy and the local election district constable.  Government records concerning the Office of Sherif, which are few in number, seem to tell us the early sheriffs were primarily engaged in carrying out their day-to-day duties within the immediate confines of the county courthouse in Upper Marlboro.  These duties primarily related to the servicing of judicial papers, enforcing court edicts, collecting fines, empaneling juries, maintaining the county jail, and occasionally administering judicially ordered corporal punishment.(4)   The sheriff, in addition to his executive courthouse duties, was also the county’s chief law enforcement officer and therefore responsible for the county wide maintenance of law and order.

Generally speaking, a Prince George’s County Sheriff, at least in the last half of the 19th century, was believed to have only one full-time deputy and a couple of jailers under his every day supervision.  The sheriff, out of tradition and necessity, relied upon a group of geographically dispersed volunteer constables to provide their individual home communities with a part-time police service.  Appointed by the county commissioners, the constables were described as local “guardians of the peace” who performed their duties when called upon by a citizen seeking some form of a police service. The constables received no compensation for their services other than a small remuneration fee when successfully serving court papers.  Functioning under the sheriff’s sparse supervision, the constables’ arrest authority was ordinarily restricted to their home election district; however, there is some evidence leading us to believe the sheriff’s deputized certain constables, thereby granting them full county-wide authority.  The volunteer constable police system, although notoriously awkward, provided the geographically large and sparsely populated Prince George’s County with a more than adequate police service for more than two hundred years.(5)

At the time, the Maryland Constitution restricted the sheriff to a single two-year term on office.(6)   The term, because of its brevity, tended to minimize the sheriff’s investigative skillfulness, especially when it came to the investigation of major unsolved crimes like murder, rape, and robbery.  On those rare occasions when a major unsolved crime occurred, it was customary for the Prince George’s County authorities to request assistance from a more experienced law enforcement agency.(7)    Several early newspaper accounts make reference to a Baltimore City private detective being hired by the Bowie family to assist with the murder investigation.  The Evening Star for March 29, 1893, also makes reference to a “a detective from Washington is coming down to work the case.”  Many of the Bowie murder news accounts additionally  make reference to the existence of a mutually cooperative law enforcement relationship between the sheriff and the county state’s attorney.

The saga of Mr. Bowie’s murder is being presented here in six parts.  Each part contains material intended to enhance the reader’s overall understanding of the circumstances surrounding Mr. Bowie’s death and the role certain individuals played in a series of ensuing events.  I’ve also included some material pertaining to the existing social environment of Souther Maryland so the reader might better understand the prevailing racial divides that were an inherent part of everyday life.  I strongly urge the readers of this book to review the replicated 1893 newspaper commentaries in Part Four and the specially selected newspaper accounts relating to Mr. Bowie’s murder in Part Six of this book.  These accounts, with their time period rhetoric, expressive phraseology, and sporadic humor, are a joy to read and tend to brung the reader back into the late 1890s time period.

One final, but important, reminder before recounting the story of Mr. Bowie’s murder.  It is important for the modern-day reader to realize the story, as present here, is being told from an 1893 perspective.  Some modern analysis has been included, but it has been kept to  a minimum.  Much of the story’s descriptive rhetoric comes directly from the 1893 newspaper accounts relating to the murder.  The United States, during this time period, was a segregated country with little empathy for the plight of “colored people.” The vast majority of newspapers, when describing a person of African American descent, used the word “colored” for the purpose of differentiating people by their race.  The word “Negro” was occasionally used in newspapers, but with far less frequency.(8)

In closing, please note that I am not a historian.  I see myself as a gatherer of historical information relating to Southern Maryland and the people who lived there in bygone times.  The surprising and unexpected discovery of a series of obscure and amazingly detail newspaper articles about the Francis M. Bowie murder acted as a catalyst, allowing me to enter into a long-forgotten time and place, the end result being what has been recorded on the following pages.  I sincerely hope my efforts to shed some light on these lost moments in time will allow the reader to walk away from what has been recorded here with a better understanding of old-time Southern Maryland and the people who lived through this human tragedy.  

• Author: Dennis Campbell
• Author / Historian
• Retired Prince George’s County, Maryland Police Lieutenant
• Former Metropolitan Washington, D.C. Police Officer

Book Information

• Published by Idlewild Publishing, Saint Leonard, MD 20685
• Printed in 2016
• Copyrighted 2016 by Idlewild Publishing, All Rights Reserved, First Printing 2016
• ISBN 978-0-9977627-0-9
• Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: TXU 1-965-861
• Preface Copied , pages ( 9 through 13 ), by Permission of Author, February 1, 2025
• Preface Footnotes 1 through 8 found on Book Pages 201 & 202
• ( Note: The Book is Out of Print )