John Butz Bowman wrote down his memories of living in Schuylkill Haven and Pottsville, Schuylkill County, focusing on stories he had heard and things he had seen in the second half of the 1800s and the early years of the 1900s. Most of his memories relate to the Schuylkill Canal and the people who lived and worked on and along the canal. The notes were typed up as part of the Works Progress Administration oral history project run out of the Pottsville Free Public Library, and they were bound into a manuscript volume in 1941. Photographs of parts of Schuylkill County and John Bowman's family are included in the bound volume.