Calvin Josiah Cowles (January 6, 1821 – April 1, 1907) was an American merchant and politician. Born in Hamptonville, North Carolina, he was educated in local schools. In 1846, at the behest of his father, he established a general store in Elkville, a community at the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Initially trading in skins and furs, Cowles rapidly expanded his business into medicinal plants, which he sourced from local customers and storekeepers and shipped to drug manufacturers in the North and Midwest. He moved his store to Wilkesboro in 1858 and remained in operation there until 1869. He also took an interest in land speculation and mining, acquiring vast acreages in North Carolina and other states, and devoted significant energy towards the development of a mine in Ashe County.
Like his father, Cowles was initially active in Whig politics. He served as a U.S. postmaster in Elkville and Wilkesboro and remained a Unionist during the American Civil War. During the Reconstruction era, he supported the creation of the North Carolina Republican Party and presided over the state's 1868 constitutional convention. Through his political connections, Cowles was appointed superintendent of the U.S. Assay Office in Charlotte in January 1869. He resigned in 1885 and returned to Wilkesboro to focus on his land investments. He also compiled reports on local weather and agricultural affairs and harvested and sent specimens to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He died following an illness in 1907.
Early life Calvin Josiah Cowles was born on January 6, 1821, in Hamptonville, North Carolina to Deborah Sanford and Josiah Cowles. The couple moved to the community from Connecticut in 1815. Josiah Cowles was a successful merchant and tinsmith. An active member of the Whig Party, he at times chaired the Surry County court and served on the governor's council during the tenure of William Alexander Graham. Following the birth of two other children, Sanford died in 1827. Josiah Cowles married Nancy Carson Duvall in 1828 and she brought three of her own children into the family.
Calvin Cowles was educated in local schools in Hamptonville and acquired further education through home study and business pursuits. He married his stepsister, Martha Duvall, on September 19, 1844. They had seven children together before Martha died on April 3, 1866.
Business career General merchandise and plants business
In 1846, Cowles was dispatched by his father to establish a branch of the family general store businesses in Elkville, a community at the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Much of his early trading activities concerned skins and furs and various other naturally-sourced goods local residents would use to barter with him for his store's merchandise. By the following year, he was trading ginseng and snakeroot. He sold small amounts of plants to local physicians for medicinal purposes but made little money doing so.
In 1849, against his father's wishes, Cowles decided to purchase large amounts of flowers, seeds, roots, and bark from local collectors and market them to pharmaceutical interests in the American Northeast as national interest in the botanical drug trade grew. To further his business, he curated knowledge in botany and medicine and read the American Journal of Pharmacy . Explaining the advantage of the biodiversity of the Southern Appalachian mountains to a potential customer, Cowles wrote, "Our locality is in the Mountains midst a profusion of plants heretofore unexplored." In 1850, he and his brother took a wagon to the North to sell botanicals and acquire other merchandise for resale. They passed through Washington D. C., Philadelphia, New York City, before selling out their cargo to the Shaker Society in New Lebanon, New York. He would continue to take annual trips to Northern cities to trade locally-sourced goods to merchants there and acquire items to sell in his store.
Cowles initially struggled in his efforts to engage with the national pharmaceutical market owing to the volatility of botanical prices and difficulties in shipping plants across vast distances, but his prospects improved as largescale producers of plant-based drugs emerged in the mid-19th century and became major buyers of his merchandise. While Cowles would sometimes barter with local customers at his store in Elkville who came bearing roots and herbs, by the late 1850s he had developed a regular system of sourcing medicinal plants from rural stores further west in the Blue Ridge Mountains. During the spring season he would supply storekeepers with posters listing the plants for which he knew commercial demand existed. Locals would use plants they had gathered to barter with the storekeepers for their wares, and once or twice a year the storekeepers would send a wagon full of botanicals to Cowles in exchange for boxed goods. He would then pack the plants into bales and ship them to customers via wagon, boat, and railroad. Cowles expanded his trade to the Midwest and Europe, selling over 11,000 pounds of plant products to St. Louis druggist William S. Merrell between 1854 and 1857 and exporting over 3,000 pounds of roots, seeds, and bark to London between 1852 and 1853. He also sold thousands of pounds of plants to five different Shaker communities, in Ohio, New York, and New Hampshire for medicinal use. Historian Luke Manget calculated that between 1850 and 1860, Cowles sold approximately 150,000 pounds of botanicals to 30 different American buyers. Selling 85 different species of plants, his major products were bloodroot, lobelia, lady's slipper, mayapple, and wild ginger. Ginseng destined for export to China yielded the highest profit. Over half of Cowles' business in the 1850s went to the Shakers and Tilden & Company.
In 1858, Cowles moved his family to Wilkesboro and opened a new store. The outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 caused him great economic consternation and severed his trade with Northern plant buyers. To acquire drugs and supplies for its war effort, the government of the secessionist Confederate States of America established a series of medical purveyor depots across the South. Cowles quickly sought out orders from the purveyors in Charlotte and Goldsboro and began making steady shipments to them in 1862. His trade with the Confederate officials never reached the volume of his antebellum business with private buyers and was occasionally fraught with disputes over payment. In March 1863, Confederate Surgeon General Samuel P. Moore wrote to inform him that no more botanicals were needed and that the chief purveyor of the Goldsboro depot had resigned. Cowles thereafter discontinued his business with the Confederacy, though through the war he continued to sell goods to customers in Charleston, New Orleans, and Mobile.
By the time of the collapse of the Confederacy in 1865, Cowles was low on money and supplies, writing to a contemporary that "our business is torn up badly but still have vitality enough left to do a small business". He reconnected with some of his antebellum Northern buyers and, after scrounging together stock from the region, was able to make small shipments by the end of the year. Cowles' plant business was thus slowly reestablished and he garnered a few new customers, but in the aftermath of the war he became increasingly drawn into politics and other economic pursuits. In 1868, he erected a store and plant warehouse in Ashe County, then the largest structure in the county, and gave his son Arthur charge over it. By then, other regional merchants and companies had begun participating in the botanical drug trade. One contemporary later credited Cowles with developing a plant business model which was adopted by others. Cowles closed his own store in Wilkesboro in 1869. Overharvesting and related ecological impacts led to the decline of Cowles' plant business in the 1870s, with Arthur reporting in 1878 that their enterprise had "failed within the past year owing to roots and herbs becoming almost exterminated."
Land speculation and the Gap Creek Mine While storekeeping in Elkville, Cowles developed an interest in mining and engaged in land speculation, buying up real estate from bankruptcies and land warrants. He also corresponded with miners and the North Carolina state geologist and studied mining textbooks. He sent mineral samples and Native American artifacts to the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations in 1853. By 1861, by his own account, Cowles owned 6,000 acres in Wilkes and adjoining counties including four farms, 1,100 acres in Kansas, and 400 acres in Missouri. Sources disagree on his status as a slaveholder; according to historian Luke Manget, Cowles did own slaves, while historian Steven Nash wrote that no record of him owning slaves exists. Real estate comprised the largest surviving portion of his wealth at the end of the Civil War.
In 1854, Cowles and four other men secured an option to purchase a mine at Gap Creek in Ashe County. With Cowles paying half the purchase price, they acquired the property in 1856. He gradually bought out the other partners until he became the sole owner of the property in 1866. He had the mine inspected several times and, following the Civil War, searched for an investor to supply him with the capital necessary to exploit it.
In 1879, Cowles’ efforts attracted the attention of New York investor William C. Brandeth. Cowles agree to lease the mine to a company Brandeth established, the Copper Knob Mining Company. Brandeth and two other New York investors served as the company officers. Cowles received one third of the company's shares at a value of $100,000 and was made a director. While initially optimistic about the enterprise, his opinion soured as he expressed disapproval of the equipment ordered to exploit the mine and, at the first shareholder meeting in New York in June 1880, was surprised by an action of the board to issue more shares, thus diminishing his influence in the company. His son Josiah urged him to sell his shares over the subsequent months, warning in letters that management was poor and that the copper vein was exhausted. Records indicate that the mine was only in production for the year 1880. Following a drop in stock price, Brandeth reorganized the Copper Knob Mining Company and merged it with several others to form the North State Mining Company. The new company's share price dropped dramatically in January 1882. In January 1883 the Gap Creek Mine operation was reorganized as the Rich Knob Copper Company. By 1889 the company had failed.
Following his return to Wilkesboro in 1885, Cowles devoted most of his professional energies towards his land investments. He sold off most of his land in western states in 1905.
Political career Like his father, Cowles was initially active in Whig politics. He served as U.S. postmaster in Elkville from 1852 to 1858. He subsequently became a postmaster in Wilkesboro. During the Civil War, he became an active supporter of North Carolina's "peace movement", led by newspaper editor William Woods Holden. An avowed Unionist, he opposed the secession of the Confederate States and refused to make an oath in loyalty to it, causing him to lose his Confederate postmastership in 1863. He was not drafted into the Confederate military due to a chronic leg infection. As he was publicly known for his Unionist bona fides, he was able to convince federal troops to not sabotage local facilities during Stoneman's 1865 raid. Following the war, Cowles was pardoned for his service to the Confederate government by U.S. President Andrew Johnson in 1865.