Fred Cowan

Who is Fred Cowan?

Fred Cowan is a Kentucky politician. He currently serves as a Kentucky Circuit Judge of the 30th judicial district in Louisville. He is a former Kentucky Attorney General and former member of the Kentucky State House of Representatives for the 32nd district. Cowan is one of the few Kentuckians who has been elected to all three branches of Kentuckian State Government.

Cowan was born on October 11, 1945 in New York, NY to Mary Virginia Wesley of Union County, KY, and Frederic Sr. of NY, NY. At age 8 he moved to Sturgis, Kentucky and a year later moved to Louisville where he attended Bloom Elementary, Highland Middle, and Atherton High School. In 1967 Cowan graduated from Dartmouth College and served in the Peace Corps in Dessie, Ethiopia. While in Ethiopia, he taught English at Woizero Siheen High School and became fluent in Amharic.

Once he returned to the US, he taught 5th grade in North Carolina before moving to Little Rock, Arkansas where he was a copy editor at the Arkansas Democrat and then started a grassroots consumer organization. In Little Rock, he met and married Linda Marshall Scholle, granddaughter of Lenore Marshall and great-granddaughter of Louis Marshall.