Introduction
Those of you who are reading this (and who undoubtedly are few in number), I admire you for your patience, perseverance, and love. Without those qualities, it is unlikely you would have stuck with me through three extensive periods of time in one single year in which my blog has been “down” for weeks at a time. My site has been hacked and ruined three times, but we have now moved to a new provider who has assured us that security for my site will be much improved. Time will tell. Nonetheless– I thank you for your readership and feedback which some of you give me when I see you face to face.
During this most recent time of waiting and restructuring, much has welled up in my writer’s heart. Numerous posts will be forthcoming in the next few weeks.
by Teri Ong
I have been reminded in the last couple weeks in a variety of ways of the price of freedom. I attended a lecture on William Wallace and Robert the Bruce and was reminded that these men paid with their very lives so the Scots could have freedom from the political oppression of the English. In much the same way as the Apostle Paul witnessed the martyrdom of Stephen and later gave his life for the same cause, Robert the Bruce witnessed the ignominious drawing and quartering of Wallace and then gave himself to the cause of Scottish independence.
I have also caught snatches of news reports about the ongoing demonstrations in Tehran by the Iranian people infuriated by a fraudulent election. Their obvious courage in the face of random killings and secret imprisonments should cause those of us who have lived in truly democratic societies to fall down on our knees and thank God for the incredible liberty we have had. Their courage should cause us as Americans to repent in dust and ashes of the fact that we are squandering more and more of our liberty each day in exchange for false promises of economic security.
Then, to cap it off, my husband (who dreaded the task) informed me that my blog site had been destroyed by a hacker for the third time this year. The first time, an ideological terrorist from another country destroyed my site because he hated my message. The second and third times, opportunistic criminals destroyed my site in the process of finding a way to send out illegal spam on the internet. It doesn’t really matter why the various hackers did what they did; the result was the same– my freedom of speech was impaired.
The price I am currently having to pay to restore my freedom of speech is moving my blog to a better provider, which will cost more money besides the cost in the multitude of hours it will take my son and me to put everything back right.
In November 2000, after the fateful presidential election night on which there was no decisive winner, I stayed up all night praying through the book of Psalms for our government leaders. That night, I did not know the process would involve up-and-down court battles that would last for weeks; but the fact that the “smooth transfer of power” was not so smooth really shook me. The morning after the election, in a very emotionally fragile condition, I had to conduct my elementary choir. They were working on a repertoire of patriotic music that included the song “The Price of Freedom.” I still cannot, these many years later, think of the incident without tears coming to my eyes once again.
Looking into the faces of those youngsters while thinking of the political upheavals that could potentially rob them of the freedom I had known all my life, was one of the most difficult things I had ever had to do as a teacher. What cost would they have to pay? Would they have the moral capitol to pay the price if and when required to do so?
My earliest ancestors in America were the Bownes and the Winthrops. They were part of the Puritan migration in the 1630’s– people who understood the price of freedom and were willing to pay.
When John Winthrop was ferrying people across the Atlantic on his fleet of ships, one group of freedom seekers who came on the ship Lyon included one of his adult sons. The son, Henry, who admittedly had a wild streak, was drowned on the trip, and thus, his widow Elizabeth ended up in America alone. In her desperation, she married a man named Feake. Though her marriage was not a happy one, she had several children with him, including a daughter named Hannah.
Hannah Feake grew up to marry John Bowne, and they settled at Flushing, Long Island in what was then New Amsterdam. Under the Dutch regime the settlers had been granted freedom of conscience in religious matters. Holland had a history of religious toleration. Remember, the Pilgrims had lived there for 12 years before coming to America. The original charter for the town of Flushing in territory governed by the New Netherlands Company allowed colonists the same freedom of conscience they would have enjoyed in Holland.
The charter, dated October 10, 1645 states:
“We do give and grant, unto said Patentees… to have and Enjoy the Liberty of Conscience, according to the custome and manner of Holland, without molestacon or disturbance, from any Magistrate or Magistrates, or any other Ecclesiasticall, Minister, that may extend Jurisdicon over them.”
It is little wonder that the towns in New Amsterdam attracted a wide range of religious dissenters, many of whom were English, escaping religious oppression in their home countries. In the first few years, Flushing and Jamaica, two settlements on Long Island, had a religious population that included Baptists, Lutherans, Quakers, Anglicans, and even Jews, in addition to those who subscribed to the officially sanctioned Dutch Reformed creed. In time, however, the stern and somewhat cranky governor, Peter Stuyvesant, grew tired of attracting all manner of the religiously disaffected from all over Europe. He decided that he was going to rescind the charter and crack down on all religious meetings that were not Dutch Reformed. He issued the following proclamation in 1656:
“Beside the Reformed worship and service, no conventicles or meetings shall be kept in this province, whether it be in houses, barnes, ships, barkes, nor in the woods, nor fields, under forfeiture of 50 guilders, for the first time, for every person present, and twice as much for every person who exhorted or taught, or who shall have lent his house, barn or other place…”
The property owners in Flushing lodged a protest known as the “Flushing Remonstrance,” which was signed by 31 of the leading citizens, most of whom were Reformed in theological outlook. In 1657 they responded to Stuyvesant:
Right Honorable,
You have been pleased to send up unto us a certain prohibition or command that we should not receive or entertain any of those people called Quakers because they are supposed to be, by some, seducers of the people. For our part we cannot condemn them in this case, neither can we stretch out our hands against them, to punish, banish, or persecute them… The law of love, peace and liberty in the states [of Holland] extending to Jews, Turks and Egyptians, as they are considered sonnes of Adam, which is the glory of the outward state of Holland, soe love, peace and liberty, extending to all in Christ Jesus, condemns hatred, war and bondage; and because our Savior saith it is impossible but that offenses will come, but woe unto him by whom they cometh, our desire is not to offend one of His little ones, in whatsoever form, name or title hee appears in, whether Presbyterian, Independent, Baptist or Quaker, but shall be glad to see anything of God in any of them, desiring to doe unto all men as wee desire all men should doe unto us, which is the true law both of Church and State…
Therefore if any of these said persons come in love unto us, we cannot in conscience lay violent hands upon them, but give them free egresse and regresse unto our Town, and houses, as God shall persuade our consciences. And in this we are true subjects both of Church and State, for we are bound by the law of God and man to doe good unto all men and evil to noe man…
Their protest did not stop Stuyvesant from enforcing his own less tolerant ordinance. In time, one of the leading citizens, John Bowne, was arrested for allowing Quakers to hold meetings in his home. Bowne was an Anglican, but his wife was a Quaker. At first, the Friends met in the woods adjoining his property. Later Bowne was “convinced” by the purity and simplicity of their faith and worship, and even modified the structure of his dining room and furnishings to accommodate Quaker “conventicles.”
On September 1, 1662, Bowne was taken from the side of his sick wife and baby and jailed in a solitary dungeon under heavy guard on a diet of bread and water for holding “illegal” religious meetings in his home. The men of the town protested his arrest. But Stuyvesant, who did not relish challenges to his authority and wanted to make an example of Bowne, tried a number of maneuvers to have Bowne exiled from the colony. Bowne stood fast on the original charter that guaranteed toleration and appealed to courts in Holland. While still officially under arrest, he was taken to Manhattan to board a ship for Holland.
The ship, which had sailed on December 31, 1662, went off course in a winter storm and made land-fall in Ireland. It took until May of 1663 for Bowne to make his way across Ireland and England and eventually on to Holland. While in Holland, Bowne endured delay after delay as the courts considered his case. Eventually, he was given a written decree in Dutch for him to sign. He would not sign it until it was translated for him, which translation revealed the insincerity of the council. He made his own written reply:
“Friends: The paper drawn up for me to subscribe I have perused and weighed, and do find the same not according to the engagement to me through one of your members, namely, that he or you would do therein by me as you would be done unto, and not otherwise. For which of you, being taken by force from your wife and family (without just cause) would be bound from returning to them, unless upon terms to act contrary to your conscience and deny your faith and religion, yet this (in effect) do you require of me and not less. But truly I cannot think that you did in sober earnest ever think I would subscribe to any such thing. It being the very cause for which I rather chose freely to suffer the want of the company of my dear wife and children, imprisonment of my person, the ruin of my estate in my absence there, and the loss of my goods here, than to yield or consent unto such an unreasonable act as you would thereby enjoin me unto.”
He then prayed that the Lord would give them “eyes to see and hearts to do justice.”
Two days later, on May 30, 1663, the council agreed with Bowne’s appeal , vindicated him, and put him on the proverbial “slow boat” to New York via Barbados and a number of other ports of call in the Caribbean. Finally on the 30th of January, 1664, seventeen months after being taken from his home, Bowne was reunited with his family. He wrote in his journal that day,
…in the morning we arrived at New Amsterdam, and the same day I came into my own house, being the first house I ventured into in the country, where I found my family in good health. Praises to the Lord forever!
How do I know about this obscure but defining event in American history? My mother’s maiden name is Bowne. The blood of the Bownes courses through my own veins.
Each time my blog site has been hacked, I have questioned whether or not I should start again. Maybe I should just “sit down and shut up.” My husband Steve is convinced that what I have to say has value for others in the kingdom of God. He has persuaded me once again not to give up, but to counter-attack.
Will I have more technical difficulties? Probably. But I will keep on as long as God gives me utterance. In comparison to my ancestors, I have paid little. And as they are part of the “great cloud of witnesses” surrounding me, I don’t want them to be ashamed of me.
Here is the record of my direct descendancy from John Bowne, who came to America in 1649.
John Bowne ( b. May 9, 1627 Matlock, England– d. Oct. 20, 1695 Flushing, N.Y.) Married Hannah Feake [Feke] (daughter of Robert Feake and Elizabeth Fones Winthrop). They begat
Samuel Bowne (b. Sept 21, 1667 Flushing, NY– d. March 30, 1745 Flushing NY) married Mary Becket (d. June 21, 1707 Flushing, NY). They begat
Samuel Bowne (b. Nov. 29, 1692/3 – d. March 31, 1769) married Sarah Franklin (b June 2, 1700– d. June 17, 1767). They begat
Samuel Bowne (b. March 14, 1721 – d. Feb. 25, 1784) married Abigail Burling (b. Dec. 25, 1734– d. Dec. 6, 1785). They begat
Samuel Bowne (b. April 5, 1767– d. April 25, 1803) married Hannah Pearsall (b. Mar 5, 1769 – d. Mar 12, 1831). They begat
Lindley Bowne (b. Aug. 21, 1800 – d. April 24, 1879) married Mary Tagg (b. April 24, 1820– d. Apr. 11, 1891). They begat
George Tagg Bowne (b. Feb. 1, 1842 – d. June 16, 1927) married Mary Cornelia Gilbert. They begat
Adrian Gilbert Bowne (b. Nov. 9, 1885– d. Oct. 23, 1950) married Helen Margaret Emerson (b. Oct. 21, 1888 – d. Mar. 6, 1966). They begat
Patricia Anne Bowne (b. May 18, 1930) married Stanley Irvin Swinney (b. Sept. 14, 1926 – d. Jan. 2005). They begat
Teresa Lynn Swinney (b. June 16, 1955) married Stephen Ross Ong (b. Jan. 5, 1949)
Sometime I will tell you about Steve’s ancestors, the Francis Ongs, who came from the same place (Lavenham, Suffolk, England) and sailed on the same ship (the Lyon) and arrived in the same year (1631) as my earliest ancestors. Ours was truly a marriage made in antiquity.
References:
Carman, Margaret I. “For the Glory of the Town”: The Story of the Flushing Remonstrance. Flushing, NY: Bowne House Historical Society, Inc., n.d.
John Bowne: His Story. New York: The Bowne House Historical Society, 1963.
Horne, Philip F. John Bowne and Religious Freedom in New Netherland. Williams College, 1973. New York: Bowne & Co., Inc.
Ricard, Herbert F. (Transcriber). Journal of John Bowne 1650-1694. New Orleans, Louisiana: Polyanthos, Inc., 1975
Wilson, Edith King. Bowne Family of Flushing, Long Island. New York: Bowne & Co., Inc., 1987.
I was looking for John Bowne’s statement while he was imprisoned in Holland and came across your site.
I too descend from John Bowne/Hannah Feake. Samuel Bowne/Sarah Franklin’s son, James, m. Caroline Rodman whose daught., Mary, m. John King, whose daught., Caroline,
m. Thomas Waterman Jenkins.
Do you, by any chance, have a copy of that statement that the Dutch wanted John Bowne
to sign while in prison? That would put his response in better context.
The Bownes, and other early Quakers, were truly remarkable people. The strength of their
conviction always being tested.
Thanks in advance if you can pass this along.
Dave Jenkins
Howell, NJ