Oak Bowery, Alabama

Oak Bowery, Alabama
The Oak Bowery Cash Grocery building in 2019.
Oak Bowery Oak Bowery
Coordinates: 32°45′2″N 85°26′11″W
Country	United States
State	Alabama
County	Chambers
Elevation	839 ft (256 m)
Time zone	UTC-6 (Central (CST))
• Summer (DST)	UTC-5 (CDT)
ZIP code	36862
Area code	334

Oak Bowery is an unincorporated community in southern Chambers County, Alabama, United States. It lies along U.S. Route 431, north of Auburn.

Demographics

Historical population

Census	Pop.	Note	%±
1880	120		—
U.S. Decennial Census

History

Oak Bowery was first settled in 1828 by South Carolinians and was originally named Woodlawn. A Methodist camp meeting ground named Oak Bowery was established there soon after settlement, and the community adopted that name around 1835. In 1837, the Oak Bowery Female College was established, and in 1850 the East Alabama Masonic College located there. The community grew rapidly in the 1830s and 1840s, but a change in the planned routing of the Montgomery and West Point Railroad from Oak Bowery to a more southerly route ended the community's growth. Oak Bowery is today a small community of only a few residences and a church.

Notable people

• Robert Lee Bullard - general, U.S. Army
• James Ferguson Dowdell - U.S. Representative
• James Render Dowdell - chief justice, Supreme Court of Alabama
• Samuel Porter Jones - evangelist
• John William Jones - U.S. Representative
• William J. Samford - Governor of Alabama

Gallery

• 
  Oak Bowery United Methodist Church
• 
  Oak Bowery Volunteer Fire Department

Bibliography

• Miriam Ann Kirkwood Syler, "Oak Bowery, Historic Community", Lee County and Her Forebears. (Montgomery, Ala.: Herff Jones, 1983).
• Bob Crouch and Joe Harrington, Oak Bowery United Methodist Church, retrieved February 7, 2009.
• Isabella Margaret Elizabeth Blandin, History of Higher Education of Women in the South Prior to 1860, (New York:, Neale Pub. Co., 1909), 112.