TITLE: Letter from John Todd in Barbados to John Bowne
DOCUMENT ID: BFP 2018.1.02-05
DATE: 29 July 1664 (Old Style) / 8 August 1664 (New Style)
John Todd writes to John Bowne from Barbados, expressing gladness at the latter's safe homecoming and sharing religious sentiments. He details a shipment of ginger and sugar sent via Bowne's kinsman, Captain John Bowne of Gravesend, with details about the Bill of Lading, Customs, and money owed.
Notes:
During his return from exile, John Bowne spent nearly three months in Barbados, where he met the merchant John Todd (d. 1689). Todd was a prominent Quaker who hosted meetings in his home on his plantation in St. John's Parish. According to agricultural records, the commodities that Todd is sending represent produce that survived a caterpillar infestation of Bardados in 1663-'64.
Captain John Bowne (1630-1684) was a sea captain from a branch of the Bowne family that had emigrated to New England a generation before the Flushing Bownes and eventually settled in Gravesend (today part of Brooklyn.) The Gravesend Bownes were Baptists who later became original patentees of Monmouth County, New Jersey. Despite belonging to a different sect, Captain Bowne's wife, "cousin Lydia," had visited the Quaker John Bowne in prison in New Amsterdam. John Bowne of Flushing also purchased a share of the Monmouth Patent, although unlike his kinsmen he never relocated there.