John Bowman (1630 - 1718)

This profile conflates two men, John Bowman Sr, (abt 1640, probably in England-bef 1717, Virginia) and his younger namesake, either a nephew or a younger half-brother, John Bowman Jr. John Bowman Sr was either a younger son of Robert Bowman, Sr., or an older son of Robert Bowman, Jr. Robert Sr died in 1671. His birthday and family of origin in England are as yet unidentified. Leonard Bowman, (abt 1598-1670), a draper who served as the Royalist mayor of Oxford in 1642, was the son of an Edward Bowman who died in 1613. and younger brother to a Robert Bowman christened in 1588. Oxford fell to Parliamentary forces in 1646 after an extended siege. Robert Bowman Jr named a son Edward, suggesting a possilbe connection that demands proof before stating a relationship existed with the Oxford family of Bowmans. There was a Robert Bowman who matriculated at Oxford in 1642 then was excluded from the university's privileges in 1648 and reinstated after the Restoration and then granted his Master's degree. During the siege, Oxford suffered both disease and famine. It is worth noting that Robert Sr and Robert Jr could have had earlier births than previously estimated, which means the assumption that John Bowman was a son of Robert Sr must be reconsidered. If Robert Jr were born about 1620-1625 he could have been the father of others presumed previously to be his siblings, In this profile the surviving documents for both John Sr and John Jr (1661-1725) have not been differentiated and have been compressed into one figure. John Sr.'s birth date, birth place, and birth mother are unknown. He was presumably a son of Robert Bowman, but no document clarifies if that was Robert Bowman Sr or Robert Bowman Jr. Surviving deeds clarify that John Jr was a brother to Edward Bowman SR (1656-1722) and that both Edward and John Jr. were sons of Robert Bowman Jr. John Sr served in 1678 as guardian for John Jr after Robert Jr and his wife Sarah sailed for England. The court relieved John Sr of that responsibility the following year when John Jr turned 18, but the record does not state the kinship between the two men. Subsequently most surviving Henrico land and court records distinguished between the two contemporaneous John Bowmans by calling them Sr and Jr in their respective legal dealings. John Sr married about 1685 to the widow Elizabeth (Elam?) Nunnally, relict of Daniel Nunnally. By said marriage Daniel Nunnally's estate Bull Hill came under the control of John Bowman Sr. Bull Hill was on the south side of the Appomatox River near City Point and its site now lays within Prince George County. The John Bowman Sr - Elizabeth Nunnally marriage produced a daughter, Elizabeth Bowman born about 1690, who married Jeffrey Robertson about 1705 in Henrico. John Sr's death date is inferred by Elizabeth Nunnally Bowman entering land transactions in 1718 in her own name, indicating she was then a widow. John Jr, contemporaneously is married to a Sarah, but no marriage record has survived which clearly identifies her maiden name. Because Joseph Royall and Joseph Royall, Jr. both witnessed the will of John Bowman Jr., and because both Joseph and Royall passed down several generations of Sarah's descendants as given names, I have tentatively identified her as Sarah Royall, daughter of Joseph Royall (1646-1727?), and the granddaughter, Sarah Royall, named in the 1686 will of Katherine Banks Royall Isham. The Peter Hudson named as a godson in the will of John Bowman Jr may well have been Sarah's child by a first marriage to a Hudson cousin of John Bowman Jr. Hudson researchers to date have not determined the precise lineage of Peter Hudson. Sarah, if the daughter of Joseph Royall Jr, probably was born about 1675 when he was about 30. She likely married when she was 15 or 16, and likely was widowed before she was 18 and then married John Jr, perhaps so early as 1693, and had three surviving children by this marriage, probably all born between 1693 and 1710, Robert, John and Sarah. Sarah Bowman (abt 1695-abt 1728) married John Knibb, a grandson of Elizabeth Archer Brown Woodson. Her brother Robert married Brown Farrar. Her brother n John (abt 1690-1755) married Mary Cook(e), which is my line continuing through Joseph (abt 1725-aft 1780) m. Mary Clark(e), William (1755-1808) married Mary Cosby (1761-1852), Eli (1790-1871) m. Catherine McHan (1812-1888), Asa Leander (1848-1934) married Martha Harrill (1865-1931), Alfred Eli, Sr. (1880-1950) married Minnie Elvira Rollins (1881-1936), Shirley Enoch "Doc" Bowman (1925-1990) married Laura Elizabeth Morrison (1926-2005). I have a FamilyTreeDNA y-chromosome match with a descendant of Edward Bowman Sr which seemingly takes us back to Robert Bowman Jr, our last common male ancestor, and his father Robert Bowman Sr. We share haplotype G-M201. To date we have no match that would link us to a Bowman family of origin in Great Britain, the presumed home of Robert Jr and Robert Sr. James L. Bowman, Jim Bowman [Bowman-12123]