DOWEN FAMILY NAME
In early America, in the early 1700s, within Essex County, Massachusetts, there were Dowens, however, the spelling of the name changed consistently.
Early colonists often spelled names as they were pronounced...Asa was often spelled "Aser", town was spelled as "towen"
and spellings for Dowen was Down, Doane, Dowen, Dowan,Dawen, etc.
Here is what I have been able to find on early Dowens....Mary Dowen, the wife of Robert Dowen, moved to Keene, New Hampshire.
In 1668, Robert and John "Doe" are mentioned in the Records of Bradford, for the "Town of Rowley" as follows:
At a legall meeting of the inhabitants of Rowly village
by merrimak : In answar to the request of Robart haseltine
according to the direction of the arbitrator it was voted
and granted that the said Robert haseltine & his assigns shall
have all the towne right in that parsell of land betwixt
his land and merrimak rivar and that John haseltine
shall have all the tows right in that parsoll of land
betwixt ye ___ Johns land and that ___ from his ___
to his pasture provided that ye ___ robart and john
doe ___ and thayr difarins ___ thayr --iding land.
The same 26 day it was voated and granted that
John Griffing shall have liberty to ___ from his
orchard to low wattar marke.
"Jacob Shute was the son of a French Protestant, or Huguenot, who fled from Paris, on the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and took refuge in Ireland. Jacob, when about seventeen years of age, disliking the trade to which he was apprenticed, ran away, in company of one Dawen, and took secret passage in the hold of a ship for this country. They remained concealed until driven out by hunger. On arriving at Newburyport, and having nothing to pay their passage, they were sold--(their service)--for a time, to pay it. They were both bought by Captain Ebenezer Eastman, of Haverhill, and served him till twenty-one years of age. Shute settled at Penacook. He married Sarah George, of Haverhill, and had a daughter, Sarah, born here, and John and Elizabeth, born at Penacook. His wife died January, 1745. He married a second wife, (a widow Evans) by whom he had two daughters, both of whom died young. Mr. Shute died February 16, 1794, aged ninety-four."
By the above, he would have come to America with a "Dawen" in 1717, one year before Mary Snelling and Robert Dowen married.
In 1687, Andrew Foster, for twelve lbs and ten shillings, sold land in Bradford, on the side of the Merrimack River, NW of Richard Kimball's land and north of the county road from Bradford to Newbury, made in 1684, land to George Doane.
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Mary Dowen had a son named John Dowen who was bonded out at a young age.I believe he fought in the Revolutionary war, however am uncertain.He may also have been known as John Snelling, the Revolutionary War soldier who fought at Cherry Valley with the 6th Massachusetts Regiment, under Colonel Ichabod Alden.
More on him:
On 6/21/1739, John Dowan is bonded out to Ebenezer Webster for nine years and six months.Bonding out, ordinarily occurred until the age of eighteen.At the time he was bound out, he was approximately six and one half years old, which would have made him born around 1732.
In 1745, John Dowan, a minor of more than fourteen years old, was bonded out to Benjamin Porter, a gentleman, Thomas Redington, of Boxford, who was a yeoman and John Ober of Methuen, Massachusetts for one thousand pounds, on April lst, 1745, as his mother, Mary Dowan, was deceased.This would have indicated that John Dowan was born approximately 1730 well after Robert Dowan was dead.
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