Henry Moseley Bowden was born on April 10, 1819, in James City County, the son of William Bowden and Mildred Davis Bowden, and he grew up on his father’s farm near Williamsburg. As a young man he engaged in farming and built houses. On December 24, 1839, he married Elizabeth A. M. White. After her death he married Esprella Eugenia Ann Ware on December 23, 1841, and they had one daughter. Sometime after his second wife’s death on April 17, 1850, Bowden was married a third time, to a widow, Henrietta Susan Stevens Stubblefield. Their one child, George Edwin Bowden, served in the U.S. House of Representatives.