Thank you for uploading "That Dog Gone Rag" by Petway. I've never seen this rag before. There is a tune with a similar title: That Dawggone Rag" by Maurice K. Smith which has turned up in sheet and roll form. But this Petway piece is a genuine rarity.
I will check your manuscript of Bowman's "12th St. Rag" against the manuscript versions of "6th St. Rag" and "10th St. Rag." It would be interesting if they're the same (and would lead to more speculation about Bowman vs. his daughter writing out the pieces). As I understand it, back in those days there were a lot of arrangers for hire. You could go to a sheet music or piano roll publishing house, play your tune over for the arranger, and for a fee walk away with a manuscript suitable to send to LOC for copyright purposes. That's another way the Bowman rags could have been copyrighted originally.
Re. Bowman recordings, the 1924 recording of "12th St. Rag" for Gennett Records may not only exist, but it could have been actually issued. You might even have it in your record collection. Rust's book should be consulted for details of this, but in essence through a little bit of research Mike Montgomery and I worked up a theory about the "unissued/lost" Bowman master of "12th St. Rag." At about the same time Bowman was in the Gennett studio, Black jazzman/composer/pianist Richard M. Jones came in for a recording gig. Jones was not known to be a great pianist. That session resulted in Jones' only piano solo record, having "Jassin' Babies Blues" on one side (a recent and considerably popular hit by Jones) and of all things "12th St. Rag" on the other. Mike proposed that it's very hard to understand why Jones, who was a songwriter and blues-man, would elect to record this rag, written by a white composer, and which in its original form is not trivial to play. And RMJones playing on the "Jassin' Babies Blues" side is nothing to write home about. After checking dates and matrix numbers, we theorized that it was Bowman on the "12th St. Rag" side, and Jones was credited on the label by accident. Kind of makes you want to play over that Gennett record another time, doesn't it??
All Best,
Frank
Mike and I feel that it's too much of a coincidence for the Gennett track not to be Bowman, but nobody can ever know for certain. Euday L. Bowman was certainly one of the most colorful figures in ragtime history, and there's always more to learn about him! Many thanks for all your hard work in posting the recordings as mp3 files to walk us through this controversy. That is of enormous value in studying the intricacies of ragtime history. 
!) and it indicates it was again issued by Bowman, not Gennett....it seems like a mish-mash of the info on the 1924 recording and the 1940s (1938) recording.... 
