Joseph J. Fowler, a notable planter in Faulkner County, Arkansas, was born in 1840 in Lauderdale County, Alabama. His parents, H. Fowler and M. (Nolan) Fowler, moved to Arkansas in 1847. Joseph learned the wagon-making trade from his father and later became a farmer in 1870. Married to Susan I. McEwan in 1861, they had six children. Fowler served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. He owned 120 acres near Conway, Arkansas, and was active in local Masonic Lodge No. 51. His close friend was Governor J.P. Eagle.
Joseph J. Fowler, intimately identified with Faulkner County as one of its prominent planters, was born in Lauderdale County, Ala., in the year 1840, and is a son of H. and M. (Nolan) Fowler, born in South Carolina in 1806, and Alabama in 1813, respectively. The father moved to Alabama with his parents in 1818, and met his wife there a number of years afterward. Shortly after their marriage, they removed to Mississippi, and when Joseph was seven years old, the parents came to Arkansas. In 1852, they located in Lonoke County, where the father died in 1857, and the mother in 1863. The elder Fowler was a merchant and farmer by occupation, and a son of John Fowler of South Carolina, whose father was Joseph Fowler, a native of England and a soldier in the Revolutionary War. The grandfather on the mother’s side, Thomas Nolan, was also a soldier during the Revolution and fought at the Battle of New Orleans under Gen. Jackson.
Joseph J. was the second child of three sons and four daughters born to the parents, and since he has been seven years old, has resided in Arkansas. When nineteen years of age, he entered the wagon-making establishment of his father, where he learned the trade, and followed that calling until the year 1870. He then turned his attention to farming, at which he has continued ever since. He was married in Lonoke County in 1861 to Miss Susan I., daughter of Samuel and Harriett McEwan, of Ohio and Kentucky, respectively, and had six children by this union, of whom two sons and one daughter are yet living. Soon after his marriage, he removed to Texas, and on the outbreak of the war between North and South, he enlisted in the Fourth Texas State Cavalry Troops, Confederate Army, and served in that body until he was honorably discharged. On his return to Arkansas, he joined the Twelfth Arkansas Regiment of Cavalry, and took part in a great many battles and skirmishes, until October 1864, when he retired from the army to enjoy the peace he had so nobly won.
Mr. Fowler then located in Lonoke County and resided there until 1870, when he moved to his present farm, which was then but very little improved. He now has seventy-five acres under cultivation, and altogether owns about 120 acres of the most fertile land in Central Arkansas, situated some five and a half miles east of Conway. In politics, he was formerly a Whig, but is now an independent voter, and uses his influence for the man he honestly thinks entitled to office. He has been a prominent member of Lonoke Lodge No. 51, A. F. & A. M., for twenty years. Mrs. Fowler has belonged to the Methodist Church for some time, and is a devout Christian woman who takes delight in assisting any worthy cause. One of Mr. Fowler’s most intimate friends is the present Governor of Arkansas, the Hon. J. P. Eagle, who was his playmate and companion in childhood, and a staunch friend in later days.