Frances Bowyer

Our ancestor Frances Bowyer was born in England-- probably in the hamlet of Little Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire, because that his where her husband, John Dane, was from. The two of them were shocked when their older son, also named John Dane, probably about 20 years old and already working as a tailor, was enthusiastic about joining the Puritan Great Migration, to set up a more godly dominion in the newly established Massachusetts Bay Colony. Here is young John's own statement, made years later: "To return to the way and manner of my coming.... My father and mother showed themselves unwilling. I sat close by a table where there lay a Bible. I hastily took up the Bible, and told my father if, where I opened the Bible, there I met with anything either to encourage or discourage, that should settle me. I, opening of it, not knowing more than the child in the womb, the first I cast my eyes on was: 'come out from among them, touch no unclean thing, and I will be your God and you shall be my people.' My father and mother never more opposed me, but furthered me in the thing, and hastened after me as soon as they could." From that time forward, Dane reported, "[I] bent myself to come to New England, thinking that I should be more free here than there from temptations" Parents John and Frances and their other two childern, our ancestor Francis and his sister Elizabeth, followed young John to the New World, probably before 1636 (the year Frances died).

Frances, her husband, John, and their two eldest children, Elizabeth and John, were part of the puritanical, idealistic Righteous Generation. Their youngest child, Francis, was part of the reactive, nomadic Cavalier Generation.

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