Author has connection to Jay

Stephen King is a household name as a famed author of contemporary horror and suspense. Enoch Bowden was an original landowner of Jay County.
How they intertwine is putting Jay County in the spotlight, if only for just one night.
Premiering Tuesday night on PBS, “Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.” will delve into King’s lineage on his father’s side, which reaches Jay County through Bowden.
“It’s very exciting,” said Jay County Historical Society librarian Janice Stucky. “Any piece of history that we can find that connects to Jay County, we’re excited about.”
A producer with Ark Media contacted Stucky in early January to see what the museum’s genealogy department may have on Enoch Bowden, explaining that a famous person was in the line of Bowden but unwilling to reveal who the celebrity was.
“Of course they would not divulge who the person was, and they have not to this day,” said Stucky, who sent emails over the summer asking for information from the production company to no avail.
The society wouldn’t receive any indication until nine months after that first contact when a board member came across a preview of the show online and finally found out who the connection was — Stephen King.
“I was completely astounded,” said Blake Watson, who was the first to see the promo spot. “It took me a while to just let it resonate and sink in.”
A two-minute preview clip — to.pbs.org/1r3e1Hs — shows King looking at the 1901 history book of Jay County and learning of his connection to the area.
Born in Tennessee in 1806, Bowden chose to leave the state in the early 1830s because of his opposition to slavery — a fact that surprised King. Initially guessing that Bowden moved his family for a “fresh start,” King was impressed by his ancestor’s fortitude.
“Oh my God, look at this. Good for them,” said King in the clip. “It’s good, something to be proud of. It’s better than turning the page and finding out he left because he shot somebody in a barber shop.”
Bowden, a Methodist Episcopal minister, made the move to Indiana in 1833.
While no other information is shown in the clip, Stucky uncovered quite a bit more in hours of research through the 1864 — the earliest available — and 1901 history books.
“They just wanted to know what we had so it began with the history books,” said Stucky. “There are some other names … that have Jay County connections that we’ve been asked to do some research on. Sometimes there’s information, and sometimes you can hardly pull it out.”
Bowden had a impact on the beginnings of the county.
He was found to be an original landowner in Bloomfield (Bearcreek Township), helping to organize that area of the county. In addition, he served as one of the original associate judges of the county’s circuit court from 1837 to ’43 and again from 1850 to ’51, when the position of associate judge was dissolved.
There is no record of where he was buried after his death in 1886, but Stucky guesses he rests in an unmarked grave, most likely in Bloomfield Cemetery.
His children had surnames still present in Jay County, such as Chenoweth, Gunkle and Sullivan.
And those names are what make this discovery so important, said Watson.
“It was something amazing in the sense that to look more into it and find out there’s folks here in Jay County that’s his extended family, who we pass everyday but don’t know their kinship to this epic celebrity, literary genius Stephen King,” said Watson. “It’s something we can all be proud of in the sense that Enoch Bowden represents a lot of the principles that we still try to instill in our children in Jay County to this day.”
To celebrate the findings, Jay County Historical Museum will hold a free viewing party for the show at 8 p.m. Tuesday, with a discussion afterward.
Watson hopes the episode helps show the importance of the museum and also highlights more of the history of the founding of the county.
“This was the timeframe when Jay County really started developing,” said Watson. “We talk a lot about the Hawkins in Jay County and their important involvement in settling, but this is just another family that made their mark and was influential in not only settling the county but also establishing the foundation of governance.”