Frances Bowyer

Biography

Died before July 1643

Frances, also written Francis, is the probable identification of John Dane’s first wife and Elizabeth Dane’s mother. Her surname Bowyer is less firmly established than the family relationship. Her son John’s later narrative supplies something more personal than a list of births: he remembered his mother as having served Lady Denny before her married life.

He also recalled a difficult interval after the family moved to Bishop’s Stortford, in Hertfordshire in England. His father stayed away longer than expected while concluding affairs at their former home, leaving Frances short of money in a place where she lacked familiar support. The children’s discovery of two shillings became, in the son’s telling, an example of providential help.

When the younger John left home after a dispute with his father, he remembered his mother warning that God would find him wherever he went. He later wrote that his parents followed him to New England as soon as they could.

Frances died before John’s marriage to Annis Chandler in July 1643.