John Bowne

Who was John Bowne?

John Bowne was an English immigrant residing in the Dutch colony of New Netherland, who is honored today as a pioneer in the American struggle for religious liberty.

Born in Matlock, Derbyshire, on 9 March 1627, Bowne emigrated with his father and sister to Boston, Mass. in 1648. Bowne became a merchant and married well, his wife Hannah Feake, whom he married in 1656, being a great-niece of Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts. Bowne and his bride, however, soon became adherents of the new doctrine of Quakerism, which was then being actively repressed in most of the English colonies of New England. Accordingly by 1661 they had relocated to Flushing, Long Island, where a small group of English-speaking Quakers were attempting to practice their faith in defiance of the Dutch governor of New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant.

In 1662 Bowne was arrested on orders of Governor Stuyvesant for allowing a Quaker meeting in his house. Refusing to pay the assessed fine, or to depart from the province, he was sent to Holland for trial before the Dutch West India Company.