Spotswood Dandridge Bowers

He was a son of John Meyer Bowers and Susan Bowler Dandridge.

Obituary:

Cooperstown, New York The Otsego Farmer newspaper Friday, December 29, 1939 Page 4, Column 4

Spotswood Dandridge Bowers

Spotswood Dandridge Bowers, law partner of James W. Gerard, former Ambassador to Germany, and member of the firm of Laughlin, Gerard, Bowers and Halpin, No. 40 Wall Street, New York City, died at 5:53 o'clock Friday of last week at his home, Lakelands, after a long illness. He was sixty-three years old. He was a life-long member of the Cooperstown summer colony. His legal career began in 1902 when his father, the late John M. Bowers, who also was a law partner of Mr. Gerard, was alive. One of his early cases was in assisting his father in defending former President Theodore Roosevelt in a libel suit in 1915, when Mr. Roosevelt was sued for $50,000 by William J. Barnes, Albany political leader, for calling Barnes a "boss." The trial resulted in favor of the former President. Mr. Bowers was born in Cincinnati. He attended the Berkeley School in New York and Yale College and was graduated from New York Law School in 1902. From 1911 to 1917 he was a member of the law firm of Bowers & Williamson, in Bridgeport, Conn. Then he went to New York and joined Bowers & Gerard, of which his father, who died in 1918, was senior partner, and Mr. Gerard junior partner. In 1918 Mr. Bowers became a member of Scott, Gerard & Bowers, and four years later of Laughlin, Gerard, Bowers & Halpin. He had lived in New York for many years at No. 4 East Seventy-seventh Street. He had owned considerable real estate and at one time he was a director of several real-estate firms. He was a director of the New York Law Publishing company, the Resku Holding corporation, of New York, and the Erie & Kalamazoo Railroad, which runs from Vulcan, Ohio, to Palmyra, Mich., a distance of 21.82 miles. He specialized in corporation law and was attorney for the Corn Exchange Bank Trust company in New York. His memberships included the St. Nicholas Society, Sons of the Revolution, Society of Colonial Wars, Union club, Metropolitan club, Badminton club, Rockaway Hunting club, Down Town club and the Whist club. Surviving are his wife, Mrs. Marjorie Sampson Smith Bowers, daughter of Captain Roy Campbell Smith, U. S. Navy, retired, of Cooperstown; six sons, John M. Bowers, Spotswood Dandridge Bowers, Jr., Roy Campbell Bowers, Sampson Pendleton Bowers, Nathaniel Pendleton Bowers and Alexander Stewart Bowers, and two sisters, Mrs. Martha D. Bowers, of Santa Barbara, Calif., and Mrs. Arthur Coppell, of New York City. His first wife, the former Christina McLennan, of Syracuse, died in 1917, a year after they were married. Funeral services were held Sunday at Christ Church, Cooperstown, the rector, the Rev. Father Jackson L. Cole, officiating. Burial in Lakewood cemetery, Cooperstown.