Samuel Follmer Bowers was partially named after his father's childhood guardian, George Follmer. The Follmer family was one of the original European families to settle in what is now Central Pennsylvania, and given their frequent appearance in Bower family financial documents and as witnesses and sponsors to Bower family religious events, they appear to have been very close to the Bower family.

John Bower, Samuel's father, was just a couple of years old when his father, Moses, Jr., dies, whereafter a Northumbrian court assigned both George and his uncle John Follmer to be legal guardians to two of the three Moses, Jr. children still under 10 years of age. John Follmer was also married to John Bower's older half-sister, Elizabeth, and it is believed by some that he provided the cemetery plot for the burial of Moses, Jr. in the Follmer Lutheran Church cemetery. Samuel's name was a tribute to his father's childhood guardian, and perhaps to the larger Follmer family as well.

Samuel Follmer Bowers was born, grew up, married, and saw the birth of his first child in the Liberty Township area of what is now Montour County in central Pennsylvania. After the death of his mother in 1850, he followed his father West. During the course of his long life, he married four times and had eleven children.

On every US Census from 1850 to 1900, he identifies his occupation as 'Master Carpenter', and family lore has it that he built a number of churches on his way to his final destination in Fayette County, Iowa. Starting with the 1860 US Census, he adds an 's' to the Bower surname, and all his subsequent children are given that spelling at birth.