Ephriam Bowman Goes to Jail
My Grandfather, John Ephriam Bowman, (husband of Gussie
Mae Dacus), may have crossed paths in Menlo with Sheriff John Hamilton. The
story as told to me by a Earl Copeland, of Menlo, was that when Gussie died in 1916,
Ephriam had to go to a General Store in Menlo to bury her (the store owner buried
people as a side business). Ephriam paid the store owner with a cow and a
pig. Sometime later, Ephriam Bowman took a load of produce to Menlo in a wagon
pulled by mules. The Sheriff was waiting for him and on arrival, the Sheriff arrested
Ephriam and put him in jail. The store owner had told the Sheriff that the cow and
pig died and he would keep the wagon, mules, and produce as replacement for the
dead cow and pig............... Ephriam Bowman was a sharecropper for land owner,
Mr. Cavin of Chesterfield, Alabama (the father of Jim Ed Cavin). Mr. Cavin soon
heard the report and went to Menlo and confronted the Sheriff. He told the Sheriff
that everything Bowman had brought to town was his property. The Sheriff returned
the goods to Mr. Cavin and let Bowman out of jail. Nothing else was ever said about
the incident.
The story is from Earl
Copeland as related to Uyless Wallace, about 1999
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by The GAGenWeb Project
This page was last updated on -03/23/2013