Ada Bowden Prentice
submitted by Patsy JohsonWritten by Lorene Bishop, county historian, and published in the Brownwood Bulletin.
Ada Bowden Prentice was born on May 10, 1874, in Gravel Hill, Arkansas, the daughter of Charles W. and Mary Jane (Austin) Bowden.
She married Jeff Prentice July 15, 1891, and died on March 11, 1973. She was laid to rest in the May Cemetery.
The Bowden family arrived in Brown county in October of 1890 and settled in the May area. After Ada married she lived at Whitney and Fort Worth for a short time, but most of her life in the Brownwood or May area.
Ada lived to be almost 100 and during her lifetime she saw more changes in our world than any other generation.
She traveled by horse and buggy, automobile, bus and airplane. Before her death she saw men traveling into outer space on television.
On September 7, 1880 Charles Bowden and his brother Bill loaded their families in wagons and left Gravel Hill, Arkansas, for Clio, a community in Brown Co., Texas.
Charles and Bill each purchased two new wagons and a tent to be used on the trip. It took more than a month for the families to arrive in Clio.
A cousin, Methodist minister John Wesley Bowden, lived at Clio and they pitched their tents nearby until they found a farm. Medical treatments improved greatly during Ada's lifetime. One of the reasons Charles and Mary Jane moved to Texas was to improve Mary Jane's health.
Her health greatly improved but the family was not sure if it was the climate of having her teeth pulled a few months before coming to Texas. There was no medical test to tell them what caused her illness.
While living in Brownwood in 1922, Ada's husband, Jeff, lay in the hospital for six weeks with a ruptured appendix.
Peritonitis set in and and the doctors gave him up. The antibiotic had not been discovered.
The Methodist worship services and revivals made changes during the lifetime of Ada Bowden Prentice.
The service, whether a Sunday service or a revival, lasted for two or three hours. By 1973, one hour was long enough.
One thing that did not change during the lifetime of Ada and even to this day - young people sitting in the back seat at church services.
One service Ada attended revival services at Clio. There was no Methodist church house and revival services were held in a big old frame school building.
The seats were crude but substantially built long benches, with plank seats and backs. The boys and girls managed to get the back seats. They heard very little of the sermon because they whispered, scribbled notes, rocked the seats and smiled at each other. Bro. Bowden nor his audience paid them any attention.
There were no nurseries for the babies. Mothers kept them and if they cried a little no one paid any attention. Mothers took pallets to church and revival services for their small children to sleep on. The information of this story comes from the book, "Memoirs of Ada Madora Bowden Prentice."