John Porter Bowman & Laurel Hall / Laurel Glen Mausoleum

John Bowman was born in 1816 in his grandparents’ tavern at Pierce’s Corner, VT. At 15 he began working in tanneries in Rutland and New York. In the 1840s he opened Tannery Crossing in Cuttingsville and, in 1852, acquired Stony Creek Tannery in NY. A Vermont legislator and successful businessman, Bowman secured his fortune selling leather goods to the U.S. government during the Civil War. Laurel Hall was built in 1882 across from the cemetery interring Bowman’s family. Designed by G.B. Croff in the Queen Anne style, the opulent summer home presented a wrapping porch, 16-foot ceilings, polychromatic-arched formal rooms, Eastlake-style stair, multi-hued windows, and modern amenities. Bowman retired to Laurel Hall in 1887. Continued on other side John Bowman had Laurel Glen Mausoleum erected after the deaths of his daughters, Addie and Ella, and wife, Jennie. For over a year, 125 sculptors, granite and marble cutters, masons, and laborers built the Classical and Egyptian inspired mausoleum. It was designed by NY architect G.B. Croff, who said it was “a most pathetic family history wrought in stone.” Giovanni Turini sculpted the grieving figure of Bowman, unique in American funerary art. The three caskets were interred in 1881; Bowman joined in 1891. Laurel Glen Cemetery Association was formed in 1894 to maintain the trust Bowman created for the perpetual care of the estate exactly as he left it, a provision that incited the legend of his belief in reincarnation.