Daniel Hosea Mowen, who lived for many years in Wolfsville, Myersville, and Hagerstown, was born 28 November, 1839, probably in Middleburg, Snyder County, Pennsylvania. He was eldest child of what grew into a large family headed by his father Peter Mowen (1818-1857) and his mother Susan Rebecca Renner Mowen (1815-1861).
Mowen was raised in Greencastle, Franklin County, not far over the Pennsylvania line from Hagerstown, Maryland. Peter Mowen died, aged 39, when Daniel was 17. His mother died in 1861 when he was 22. By August 1862, when he entered the Union army, Mowen had relocated to Frederick County.
According to an interview in the Frederick News of 21 July, 1976, on the occasion of his 100th birthday, Mowen’s son Waldo claimed that “For awhile, my father must have debated which side of the war to fight on,” although from the invaluable memoire Daniel Mowen left us, which is the focus of this chapter, one would ever take him for anything other than a strict Union man.
Mowen enlisted in C. F. Anderson’s Company I of the Union 7th Maryland Regiment for a three-year term. During the course of his service, he was wounded at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, heard the last speech of Abraham Lincoln at the White House, did guard duty at the Old Capital Prison on the night of the president’s assassination, and was present during the trial of the conspirators.
"Your Dying Charlotte" 