Lillian M. Bowles

Lillian M. Bowles was an African American publisher of gospel music. She was born 18 Sept. 1885 in Memphis, TN. She later moved to Chicago, IL, where she established the Bowles Music House, employing composers such as Charles Henry Pace (1886–1963) and Kenneth Morris (1917–1989). In the 1940 U.S. Census, she was recorded as single, head of household, with fellow musician Theodore Frye (1899–1963) as a boarder. On 13 Feb. 1942, she married Thomas Pannell in Chicago. She died of a heart attack on a train, 25 June 1962, near Creston, IA, returning home to Chicago from a National Baptist Convention USA Sunday School and BTU Congress in Denver, CO. Her funeral at Olivet Baptist Church, Chicago, was well attended, as reported in newspapers at the time.

—Chris Fenner