Bowman's Grove Cemetery

Bowman's Grove Cemetery

Bowman's Grove Cemetery is located about five miles East of Harlan, Shelby County Iowa on land donated by Leonard Bowman in the mid-1800's. (He is also buried there.)

Interments here go back to the earliest days of settlement of Shelby County. It is a lovely spot, quiet and peaceful, and is well maintained by the Center Township Board of Supervisors.

Family history buffs will be able to find details on ancestors buried in Bowman's Grove by clicking on the links shown at the top of this page.

In the detailed listings, if the entr(ies) are underlined, you can click on the records to jump to gravestone photographs for that family. (Unfortunately, photos of all the gravestones at Bowman's Grove have been lost -- see below.)

The listings on this Web site are based on the 1974 inventory undertaken by Mr. & Mrs. Gaillord Heflin and Mr. & Mrs. Lloyd Obrecht, and updated in 1986 by the late Anabelle Petersen and her sister Mae, who were both active in the Nishnabotna Historical Society. A future effort will bring the list up to date to the year 2008.

Via the link shown below, you can see a diagram of the layout of Bowman's Grove Cemetery. Then, as you peruse the list of interments, you'll be able to pinpoint the exact location of where your ancestors are buried.

For several years, the list of Bowman's Grove Cemetery interments, along with a digital image of each headstone (a total of almost 500 photographs), was published on the Internet and there was a link to this database from the Shelby County Government official Web site.

Unfortunately this Internet database has disappeared. An exhaustive search across numerous state and local agencies and commercial services failed to turn up anyone with knowledge as to where the information has gone. If anyone has knowledge of these pictures, please let us know so we can restore them.

Our only remaining option, therefore, was to reconstruct the textual information from an old list on file at the Shelby County Historical Museum. We have done that, and shared the information on CDs with numerous interested parties in Shelby County and at the State level. Next, with no trace of the digital photographs, we hope to mount a volunteer effort when the weather turns nice to re-take all of the headstone pictures.