The Great Western

Mention the Great Western to some people and they might think you’re trying to start a discussion about Lonesome Doveor True Grit. Or maybe you’re referencing a railroad. Wrong, and wrong. The Great Western we’re talking about here would be a woman known by many names, the final one being Sarah Bowman, who was better known to the country by her nickname, the Great Western. 

The sobriquet came from the SS Great Western, the first of the successful trans-Atlantic steamers and the biggest ship of its day. For her part, Bowman was an inch or two taller than six feet and a biscuit shy of 200 pounds. Accounts of the day described her as graceful, athletic, and tough as hell.

Texas Ranger Captain Rip Ford wrote of her, “She could whip any man, fair fight or foul, and could shoot a pistol better than anyone in West Texas…She had a reputation as being something of the roughest fighter on the Rio Grande and was approached in a quiet and humble manner.”  

Not much is known of her life prior to coming to Texas, and not all that much of her life after she got here is fully documented either. Her first appearance in the historical record comes in 1845 where she is listed as the wife of soldier John Langwell. She traveled with him as part of Gen. Zachary Taylor’s Army, which would soon go into battle against the Mexican army in the Mexican American War. 

Bowman showed her mettle at the crossing of Arroyo Colorado, Taylor’s first confrontation with the Mexican troops, when she offered— or threatened, depending on how you want to look at it—to wade the crossing and whip every scoundrel she could find if no one else was going to. The troops then plunged into the battle en masse and routed the Mexican troops. 

Bowman as the Great Western first came to the attention of the wider world after the Battle of Fort Brown where her courage and performance of duties under fire earned her another moniker, “The Heroine of Fort Brown.” 

Newspapers in Philadelphia carried stories about her, though some of the stories were considered too bawdy for family newspapers. One correspondent addressed this indirectly by discounting “any tongue of slander” that dared to cast aspersions on The Great Western’s character. 

Bowman married several times, and it wasn’t always clear when, or if, one marriage ended and another one began. Once, after being informed that she could no longer follow the army unless she was married to a soldier, she rode the ranks of the enlisted men, calling out, “Who wants a wife with $15,000 and the biggest leg in Mexico? Come, my beauties, don’t speak all at once. Who is the lucky man?” A man named Davis reportedly accepted the offer and remained her faithful beau until they reached El Paso. 

In Mexico she ran a string of businesses including restaurants, hotels, and brothels. Once, a frightened soldier came into her hotel in Saltillo, Mexico and reported that Mexican troops had defeated Zachary’s troops at the Battle of Buena Vista. Bowman had been at the battle of Buena Vista, serving once again under fire, and knew the soldier had his story wrong. She set the record straight with a crushing right hand and a promise to kill the man if he spread the story any farther. 

Bowman is sometimes described as the first prostitute to ply her trade in El Paso. At the same time, she was linked romantically with any number of men, including high ranking U.S. Army officers. From time to time, she would marry somebody. 

Her fourth and final husband was Albert J. Bowman, with whom she moved to Yuma, Arizona in 1857. They split up some time in the 1860s. Bowman died in Yuma in either 1863 or 1866. Most accounts say she died from a fatal tarantula bite, but that is unlikely. She might have died from a spider bite, or an arachnid might have had nothing at all to do with her death. 

The Great Western was buried with full military honors at the U.S. Army’s Fort Yuma cemetery, the only woman to ever be so honored. Her army occupation is listed as “laundress,” which might lead the uninformed to think she was simply the best there ever was at keeping clothes clean. 

The graves in the Yuma cemetery were exhumed and reburied in the national cemetery at the Presidio in San Francisco in 1890. With any number of names to pick from, the name on her headstone reads “Sarah A. Bowman.”