John Fowle, Junior

Lieutenant Colonel

Paymaster, United States Army

John Fowle, Jr., the son of John and Abigail Whitney Fowle, was born on 3 November 1789 in Watertown, Massachusetts.

On 26 May 1831, John married the former Paulina Czaenove in Alexandra, Virginia.  From this marriage they had three children; Paulina Adeline, Anne Eliza, and John Charles.

The earliest recorded time of John’s military career was with the 9th Infantry when he was wounded during the battle of Lundys Lane in Canada on 25 July 1814.  On 3 October 1828, Major Fowle assumed command of Fort Dearborn near Chicago, Illinois.  During the later days of 1828, John ordered a ditch to be dug parallel to the north side of the fort and through the sand bar that diverted the river to the south.  This first attempt to straighten the river and create a harbor was ill conceived and the ditch rapidly filled with sand.  On 14 December 1830, John transferred command of Fort Dearborn to First Lieutenant David Hunter.  In March 1832, the U. S. Department of Engineers put John in charge of the construction project for the Chicago Harbor, but he was transferred before the work began.  John would return to Fort Dearborn and assume command from 14 May to 19 June 1833.

Late in the afternoon of 25 April 1838, the 150-ton Steamboat Moselle pulled away from the Cincinnati, Ohio wharf and headed east on the Ohio River to pick up a few passengers at a small landing before heading back downstream on her way to Saint Louis, Missouri.  During the stop, the engineer kept the safety valve loaded down and the boiler fires at full blast, preserving steam pressure but violating accepted safety procedures.  As the Moselle backed away from the landing, three of her four boilers exploded with a deafening roar, spewing steam, boiler parts, and fragments of bodies all over the waterfront.  What was left of the Moselle drifted out into the current and began to sink; within fifteen minutes only the smokestacks and a segment of the upper decks still showed above the surface.  Rescuers could only save about half of the passengers, and many who were not killed by the initial blast, drowned in midstream.  All told, about half of the 280 people on the Moselle died, including John. 

His wife and daughter, Pauline, survived John.  His daughter, Anne Eliza; son, John Charles; and his parents preceded him in death.

Source of information:

1.  Ancestry.com. Cook County, Illinois History [database online]. Orem, UT: MyFamily.com, Inc., 1997. Original data: Andreas, A. T. History of Cook County, Illinois: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time. Chicago, IL: A. T. Andreas, 1884.

2.  Steamboat Moselle Explosion, From Historical Recollections of Ohio by Henry Howe (http://www.rootsweb.com/~kycampbe/steamboatmoselle.htm).

3.  International Genealogical Index/North America (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints web site http://www.familysearch.org).

4.  Western Telegraph (Rossville, Ohio), 11 May 1838, page 2.