Mary Ann Bowen and Robert George Bowen, emigrated to South Australia from England with their small family aboard the ship Hooghly, arriving in June 1839. He was a builder and contractor in the early days of Adelaide, responsible for the South Australia Company's flour mill at Hackney, the Bank of South Australia on North Terrace and the Supreme Courthouse on Victoria Square. His business was taken over by English & Brown. He then founded a grain store in Waymouth Street, which in 1867 was taken over by John Darling, the foundation of the great J. Darling & Son grain and flour business. Bowen was born in Adelaide and educated at J. L. Young's Adelaide Educational Institution. On leaving school he found employment as a draughtsman in the Survey Office, where he worked for several years, a demanding job which entailed much surveying work in isolated pastoral areas and finally affected his health, and he resigned from the public service. He spent some time in Britain before returning, and in 1880 joined the partnership of Beresford, Bowen & Black, architects, surveyors, and land agents, with offices in the . The partnership was dissolved in 1884 Bowen had been appointed attorney to handle Walter Duffield's extensive pastoral and business interests, and on the old man's death Bowen, D. Walter Duffield, and Lieutenant-Colonel Makin acted as trustees and managers of the estate. Bowen's wife died, and on 2 February 1892 in England he married again, to Esther Eliza Perry, the elder daughter of Rev. Charles Stuart Perry, at one time rector of St. Jude's Church, Carlton, Victoria.
Other interests
Bowen was
secretary of the Samaritan Fund, a charity connected with the Adelaide Hospital.
Bowen married Martha Duffield on 2 July 1873 He married again, to Esther Eliza Perry in Oxford, England, on 2 February 1892. Esther was the eldest daughter of Rev. Charles Stuart Perry of St. Jude's Vicarage, Melbourne. They had two children:
Esther Gwendolyn Bowen married James George Calley in 1921
Thomas Stuart Perry Bowen was born after the death of his father. He married Mary Gladys "Mollie" Clampett on 14 August 1920
