BOWNE HOUSE ARCHIVES PRESENTS: THE PAPERS OF JOHN BOWNE (1627-1695)
John Bowne before Director-General Stuyvesant
The Bowne House Archives is thrilled to present the newly digitized Papers of John Bowne (1627-1695). Thanks to the generosity of a grant from the Levy Foundation and New York Preservation Archives Project (NYPAP), we recently preserved the Colonial-era Bowne Family Papers of Flushing, Long Island, which will be coming online in their entirety in September 2024. We previously introduced the papers of John’s first wife, the Quaker preacher and Bowne House matriarch Hannah (Feake) Bowne. Now, we are making the surviving papers of John Bowne himself available online for historians, teachers, and the general public for the first time.
The Papers of John Bowne (1627-1695) include the 17th-century land deeds that document the growth of the Bowne Estate, and the Account Book of John and Samuel Bowne, 1649-1703, where the Bownes kept records of personal, Society of Friends, and community dealings. These archives also contain Bowne’s correspondence received, which illustrates his ties to the international Quaker community and the esteemed place that he held within it. Records of his married life feature letters between, or received jointly by, Bowne and his wives, and his moving testimony for Hannah (Feake) Bowne at her memorial. Some particularly interesting documents date from the period of Bowne’s trial and exile (1662-1664), including his appeal to the Dutch West India Company in both English and Dutch; these and several related records, including a letter of George Fox, shed fresh light upon the ordeal that he underwent in defense of “liberty of conscience.”
Visit the linked collections below to view images and descriptions of the original documents, and to download both PDF copies and faithful annotated transcriptions of these historic 17th-century records. (For a description and inventory excerpted from our collection finding aid, see: Bowne Family Papers Series 2: Papers of John Bowne (1661-1695).) The Bowne House Archives is indebted to our volunteers Kate Lynch and Brandon Loo for their assistance with transcription and research.
