Frank Cowan

Who was Frank Cowan?

Frank Cowan was an American lawyer, doctor, writer, and former secretary to U.S. President Andrew Johnson.

He was born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania to Lucetta Oliver and Edgar Cowan, a local lawyer. He studied at Jefferson College, but faculty there expelled him for a prank. In 1861, however, he moved to Washington, D.C. to join his father, who was newly elected as a United States Senator from Pennsylvania. His father gave him a clerk position on the Committee on Patents. During this formative period Cowan studied law, and also became a writer of fiction, poetry, nonficiton, and drama.

In April 1867 President Andrew Johnson appointed the 22-year-old Cowan as his personal secretary for managing land patents. He worked for Johnson for the next year and a half, then opened his own law practice in Washington after Ulysses S. Grant succeeded Johnson. At this time he also started to study medicine at Georgetown Medical College, from which he graduated in 1869. He returned to Greensburg later that year and married Harriet Jack, daughter of U.S. Congressman William Jack. He opened both a law and medical practice there, and also started a newspaper, Frank Cowan's Paper, focused on Western Pennsylvania and which he edited and published for three years.