Not far from Fort Bowman, and half a mile nearer to Strasburg, is Mt. Pleasant, the handsome brick residence built by Capt. Isaac Bowman in 1812-13 on a bluff overlooking the winding course of Cedar Creek. This house is in plain view from the Valley Pike. It was for a number of years the home of J.S. Davison.

Down the creek half a mile farther is the home of Mrs. Ezra Foltz, formerly Miss Frances Bowman, a granddaughter of Capt. Isaac Bowman. Here, according to tradition, stood the log cabin of old man Powell, the wily denizen of Powell's Fort. Here, too, stood for many years the well known Bowman's Mill, a picture of which is given in English's history of G.R. Clark and Major Joseph Bowman. At this point Gen. Kershaw led his column against Sheridan's camp at dawn, October 19, 1864. This mill was probably built in 1792 or 1793; for in 1792, as the court records at Woodstock show, Isaac Bowman "was about to build a water grist mill on Cedar Creek, Frederick County, one of the abutments of the dam to be in Shenandoah County." Bowman and William A. Booth were rivals at that time, it would appear, in plans for building a mill.

The original Bowman's Mill, according to Mrs. Foltz, was up the creek a mile farther, on the Shenandoah side, at the Stickley place, where the ruins may still be seen (1927). That was doubtless the mill spoken of by the Moravians in their journal of 1753.

Excerpted from John W. Wayland's A History of Shenandoah County, Virginia

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