TITLE: Letter from Joan Brocksopp in Little Normanton, Derbyshire to John Bowne
DOCUMENT ID: BFP 2018.1.02-11
DATE: 1 June 1674 (Old Style) / 11 June 1674 (New Style)
Quaker missionary Joan Brocksopp sends her love and professions of their shared faith; news of her son's death and her resignation to the Lord's will; a visit from Bowne's sister Truth; greetings to Bowne's sister Dorothy Farrington and Quaker missionary sisters Mary and Hannah Wright. "Friends here are generally well, and the truth prospers."
Notes:
Joan Brocksopp (c.1610-1680) of little Normanton in Derbyshire met John Bowne and his wife Hannah in Rhode Island in 1661 at the first General Meeting of Friends, shortly after she and her fellow missionary Elizabeth Hooten had been arrested and expelled from Boston for unauthorized preaching.
Dorothy Bowne Farrington (1631-1678) was the sister of John Bowne and wife of Flushing magistrate Edward Farrington, who signed the 1657 Flushing Remonstrance and was arrested by Director Peter Stuyvesant..
Mary Wright (c.1642-1688) and Hannah Wright (1646-1675) of Oyster Bay on Long Island were fellow Quaker missionaries who met Joan Brocksopp and Elizabeth Hooton in jail in Boston in 1661.
Truth or Troth Bowne (b.1642) remained behind in England when the rest of the family emigrated to America in 1649, as she was only seven years old at the time.