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Preparatory Academies and Vanderbilt University
Headmasters
| 1897-1919 | Angus Gordon Bowen |
Notable Graduate
- John Crowe Ransom, Fugitive poet and Vanderbilt graduate (1909) and professor (1914-1937)
Bowen School
... Nashville, Tennessee
1897-1919
[Angus Gordon Bowen did] more for my ... education than any other man.
—John Crowe Ransom
The Bowen School was established in Nashville in 1897 by Angus Gordon Bowen, a Vanderbilt graduate. The Alabama native’s school began with four students, but by 1901 the enrollment had grown to four classes and Headmaster Bowen had been joined by languages professor Ernest E. Severy, a Yale alumnus. In 1903, James McClure, also a Vanderbilt graduate, joined the faculty as mathematics professor. The school fielded several sports teams.
John Crowe Ransom, Fugitive poet and Vanderbilt graduate (1909) and professor, graduated from the Bowen School in 1903. He credited the headmaster with doing “more for my ... education than any other man.” (1)
1. Selected Letters of John Crowe Ransom. Edited, with an introduction, by Thomas Daniel Young and George Core. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985