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ROSELAND COTTAGE, WOODSTOCK CONNECTICUT

by Anya Laurence

Roseland Cottage

Henry Chandler Bowen

In the eastern reaches of Connecticut there stands a remarkable pink house from the 1800’s. This place, known as Roseland Cottage, was the summer home of Henry Bowen Chandler and was visited by many notables of the time. Bowen founded The Independent, a Congregational newspaper which was to become closely associated with Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights, New York.

Bowen began life in Woodstock, the son of George Bowen and Lydia Wolcott Bowen, where he was educated at the Woodstock Academy, and later at the Dudley Academy. After moving to New York City in his youth, he began working at a dry-goods company owned by Arthur Tappan, a noted abolitionist of the day. He would go on to become a very wealthy man as owner of the company Bowen and McNamee, a firm that specialized in silks.

The Independent had as its editor from 1861 to 1863 the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, a noted member of the Beecher family whose many siblings we have been featuring in our articles. The newspaper was one of the few of the time that clamoured for women’s suffrage and the abolition of slaves. and in the year 1870 it was reported to have had a circulation of 70,000.

Henry C. Bowen Mansion,
Willow Street, Brooklyn

A founding member of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn Heights, where Henry Ward Beecher was pastor for several years, Bowen bought a large house on Willow Street, Brooklyn in the 1840’s, and was instrumental in bringing Beecher to Brooklyn from Indianapolis. He acted as liaison between Beecher and Theodore Tilton in 1872 when Beecher was accused of adultery with Tilton’s wife Elizabeth.

Roseland Cottage, a Gothic Revival style house built in 1846, was not really a cottage, but rather a mansion with many outbuildings and formal gardens. Bowen and his first wife, Lucy Maria Tappan, daughter of the above-mentioned Arthur Tappan, enjoyed many summers here with their 10 children.

It was reported that Lucy, on her deathbed, revealed to her husband that she and Beecher had been intimate.

Bowen began, in 1870, to host Fourth of July Celebrations at Roseland Cottage, with a guest list comprising many famous people including Presidents Grant, Harrison, Hayes, and McKinley: Julia Ward Howe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John C. Fremont and the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Roseland Cottage was deeded to the town of Woodstock in 1876 and it is now a museum open to the public. Henry C. Bowen died in 1896.