The Holmes ancestry traces back to Robert Hulme, of Reddish in the parish of Manchester, England. Robert was baptized on August 18, 1558 - - almost 450 years ago! He married ‘Alyce Wydow’, who was born also born about 1558. They had 4 children. One of them, another Robert, was born in 1582 in Stockport, Cheshire, England. On October 8, 1605, Robert Hulme wed Katherine Johnson, in Cheshire, England. (Katherine Johnson was born about 1585 - also in Stockport, Cheshire, England.) Robert inherited his father’s lands. He and Katherine had 9 children.
Their son, Obadiah, was born around 1606 in Preston, Dorset, England. It was March 18, 1610 before Obadiah was christened in Didsbury Chapel, Lancashire, England. Obadiah may have studied for a time at Oxford University, for in 1675 he wrote an account of his life for his children in which he refers to three brothers educated there. (One of Obadiah’s brothers graduated from Oxford.) Obadiah apologized to his mother, Katherine (Johnson) Hulme, for giving her serious concern because of his undisciplined ways (for a period of around 5 years). He also apologized for being neglectful and for straying from his religious duties and responsibilities during that time.
On November 20, 1630, 26-year-old Obadiah Holmes married 22-year-old, Katherine Hyde at the Collegiate Church in Manchester. (Katherine was born October 27, 1608 in Reddish.)
Obadiah and Katherine’s marriage took place just two months after the death of Obadiah’s mother - Katherine (Johnson) Hulme. Obadiah and Katherine (Hyde) Holmes would eventually have 8 children. On June 27, 1633 - during their 3rd year of marriage - church records show that Obadiah and Katherine buried an infant child.
Obadiah and Katherine’s daughter, Lydia Holmes, was born in 1637. She was the 4th of their 5 children. In 1638 - when Lydia was only a one-year-old - Obadiah, Katherine, and their children sailed from Preston on the river Tibble, in Lancashire - some 28 miles northeast of Liverpool. From there, they sailed for the ‘new world’. Their stormy voyage finally ended 6 weeks later when they entered Boston Harbor. Soon after landing, the family made their way up the coast of the Massachusetts Bay and settled at Salem. On March 24, 1639, Obadiah was admitted to membership in the First Church of Salem. Within the year, Obadiah and two friends were granted two acres of land at Salem. On this land, they established a ‘glass works’. They made glass windows. This glass works was one of the first in America. Several other factories were started in various locations but all attempts eventually failed during the colonies’ first one hundred thirty years. (The British Crown appeared to do all it could to discourage glass making in America: by high taxes, export restrictions, and other means. They wanted to sell their own glasswares to the colonies. As a result, most bottles were imported to the colonies in the early years. It was not until the 1730s that the first ‘lasting glass factory’ was built to produce bottles and other glassware.)
Obadiah’s ever-increasing Baptist beliefs did not sit well with the church in Salem. He was excommunicated in 1649. Obadiah felt he was being called by the Lord to serve as a pastor. His first church was the Congregational Church in Salem. He, then, moved his family to Rehobeth in Plymouth Colony. Obadiah, along with 8 other men, helped organize one of the earliest Anabaptist churches.
In 1651, because he preached, baptized, and held prayer meetings (without benefit of governmental approval - in this mostly Puritan area), Obadiah and two other men were arrested - and jailed (by two constables). Obadiah was fined £ 30. A bit feisty, Obadiah refused to pay the fine. A friend offered to pay the fine for him, but Obadiah would not allow it. He felt he had been called upon to suffer for Christ. Obadiah is quoted as remarking, "I have done no wrong, and I will not let an unjust fine be paid. I bless God that I am counted worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus”. As his punishment, Obadiah was publicly flogged - a cruel ‘scourging of thirty lashes’ with a three-corded whip. Some observed, Obadiah had not prayed for God to save him from the cruel whipping. He prayed only that God would give him the courage, boldness, and strength of body to suffer - for Christ’s sake - without shrinking from the strokes or shedding tears.
The whipping was so severe that a Mr. Jenekes reported: “Mr. Holmes was whipt thirty stripes, and in such an unmerciful manner, that in many days, if not some weeks, he could take no rest, but as he lay on his knees and elbows, not being able to suffer any part of his body to touch the bed whereon he lay.” As a result of Obadiah’s whipping, it was noted, ‘many who saw the courage of Obadiah Holmes wanted to find out more about his faith’, including Henry Dunster. (Henry Dunster had been appointed the founding president of Harvard in 1649. He witnessed the whipping of Obadiah Holmes. When Henry Dunster began expressing Baptist beliefs, it was the beginning of the end of his presidency of Harvard. He was compelled to resign in 1657.)
Obadiah was pastor at Rehobeth for about 11 years. By 1644, he was the second pastor of the second Baptist church (which organized in America, at Newport, Rhode Island.) He would remain in the pastoral office from 1652 until his death, thirty years. In 1656, he was a representative of the General Court at Newport. In 1657, Obadiah made a trip to Long Island - to preach among the Baptists there. In 1664, he was one of the original patentees of the Monmouth Patent. Though Obadiah did not actually move there himself, he did visit three of his children, who were prominently identified with its settlement - including his daughter, Lydia, who married Captain John Bowne.
In 1675, Obadiah was named a member of the special governor's council in King Phillip's War. (History Note: In the preceding years, relations between the colonists and Native Americans continued to worsen. The growing families of the colonists began to push the Indians to the outskirts of their native land. Understandably, most disagreements between the Indians and the settlers were over land ownership. The Native Americans believed that a person could not ‘own’ the land. The land belonged to Nature. When Indians sold ‘their land’ to the settlers, they believed they were only sharing the use of the land. The settlers thought the Native Americans would leave the land once it was ‘sold’. Tensions grew, and finally erupted into full-scale war. Rehoboth was in the midst of this fury. The Chief of the Wampanoags was Metacomet. He was the son of Massasoit, who had signed a treaty with the Pilgrims. The settlers called Metacomet, ‘King Philip’. King Philip's war began in 1675. The Wampanoags attacked the settlers and destroyed many colonial villages. The settlers destroyed the Indians’ crops. Without food, the Indians gave up the fight. The settlers took over the Indian land.
Obadiah Holmes died on Oct. 15, 1682 in Middletown, Newport County, Rhode Island. Of the immediate children (of Obadiah Holmes), four migrated south, either to Gravesend on Long Island or across Lower New York Bay into New Jersey, forming there a settlement named Middletown in honor of the Rhode Island home.
Obadiah’s wife, Katherine, lived another couple years. She died about 1684, also in Middletown, Newport County, Rhode Island.
Five years before Obadiah Holmes’ birth, William de la Bowne was born in England (1600). He was a Huguenot from Yorkshire, England. He married Ann, who was born around 1605. In 1629, William de la Bowne and his wife, Ann, along with 300 other Puritan families migrated to the New World. They immigrated to Salem Massachusetss in 1629, then to Boston in 1631, then to Long Island, N.Y. in 1646. He was patentee of Gravesend, L.I. and was it's magistrate for 7 years. He was an associate in Monmouth Patent in 1665 and member of Assembly of Patentees and Deputies of New Jersey in 1669.
William and Ann’s son, John Bowne, was born in 1630. After immigrating to America from Yorkshire, England, William and Ann Bowne settled at Salem, Essex County, Massachusetts in 1631. In 1636, William Bowne was granted forty acres of land at Jeffries Creek. William and Ann remained at Salem for several years before moving - with their children - to Gravesend (Long Island). (This was probably in 1645.) On November 12, 1646, William Bowne was granted a “planter’s lot”. On September 20, 1647, his son, John Bowne, was also granted a lot.
[Note: Gravesend (Long Island, New York) was divided in 1645 into thirty-nine lots and among those receiving shares were: Richard Stout, John Buckman, Samuel Spicer, Nicholas Stillwell, John Bowne, William Goulding, William Compton, and others whose names are familiar in the early history of Monmouth. In 1663, a company of men, living on Long Island, obtained permission of Governor Stuyvesant to settle on the banks of the Raritan. A party of about twenty English, all or nearly all of whom had previously lived in the New England colonies but most of whom were then settled on Long Island, set out in a sloop (from Gravesend in December, 1663) and sailed across the bay to what is now Monmouth County, for the purpose of purchasing lands from the Indian sachems - with visions of a settlement. ]
Without a doubt, John Bowne was the leader in the settlement of Monmouth, and, at one time, or another, held all the important offices there. The men - who were the original pantentees - made two or three more journeys from their homes on Long Island to the southern shores of the bay and finally purchased (from the Indian chief, Poppemora and his people) the three “necks” of land known to the Indians as Newasink, Navarumsunk and Pootapeck. The company made application to the Governor for a grant to cover the purchase already made and others, which they intended to make. This grant included all of the present county of Monmouth, and a part of Ocean and Middlesex counties. It is dated April 8, 1665. It became known as the famous ‘MONMOUTH PATENT’.
The Bownes contributed toward buying the land in Monmouth - from the Native Americans. John Bowne and his family, - along with his father, William, and brothers - came and settled in the spring or summer of 1664, nearly a year before the actual patent was issued. There were five families in all. (The Town Book of Old Middletown, in its first entry dated Dec. 30, 1667, shows that William Bowne was granted lot No. 8 at Portland Point.) The patentees met at Portland Point, July 8, 1670 and voted to admit as associates “a convenient number of purchasers."
[Note: John Bowne, son of William and Ann, is not to be confused with John Bowne, of Flushing, whose wife, Hannah, was a Quaker. There does not seem to be any family connection between these two John Bownes - even though they lived in the same time period - and both lived around Long Island.]
A Marriage between the Holmes and Bowne families:
Lydia Holmes, daughter of Obadiah and Katherine Holmes, had married John Bowne in 1663. (As mentioned earlier, in 1664, due to his sympathy with the Baptists, John Bowne felt the need to move his family from the Massachusetts colony. The Bowne family was one of the first five families who made a permanent settlement in Middletown, New Jersey. John Bowne and his father-in-law, Obadiah Holmes were two of the twenty patentees of the famous Monmouth Patent.) John Bowne was known as ‘an upright, conscientious Christian man’. In 1668, John was one of the founders of the Baptist church at Middletown, one of the first Baptist churches in New Jersey. He provided the lot on which the ‘meeting house’ was built. During Governor Carteret’s term, John Bowne appeared as a deputy to the first Assembly, which met May 26, 1668. The members of the Lower House were then called “burgesses”. John was deputy again in 1675. From 1680 to 1683, John Bowne served as a member and Speaker in the first Legislature of the New Jersey Assembly. In December 1683, John was appointed Major of the Monmouth Militia of Monmouth County. This made him the ranking military officer of the county. Shortly after he returned home from the session of the assembly, he ‘fell desperately ill’.
Author Daniel J. Weeks writes "Bowne, always a man of eloquence, left a touching personal message to his children." Here is John Bowne’s letter to his family:
There is no way in the world for a man to obtain felicity in this world, or in the world to come, but to take heed to the ways of the Lord and put his trust in Him who deals faithfully and truly with all men, for He knocks at the doors of your hearts, and calls you to come and buy, without money and without price.
My desire is that in all actions of meum and tuum, you deal not deceitfully, but plainhearted with all men, and remember that your dying father left it with you for your instruction that when trust is with your honor, to preserve it. And in all contracts and bargains that you make, violate not your promise, and you will have praise. Let your mother [Note: Lydia Holmes Bowne] be your counselor in all matters of difference, and go not to lawyeres, but ask her council first. If at any time you have an advantage of a poor man at law, O, pursue it not, but rather forgive him if he hath done you wrong: and if you do, so you will have help of the law of God and of his people. Give not away to youthful jollities and sports, but improve your leisure time in the service of God. Let no good man be dealt churlishly by you, but entertain when they come to your house. But if a vicious, wicked man come, give him meat and drink to refresh him, and let him pass by your doors. It has been many times in my thoughts that for a man to marry a wife and have children, and never to take care to instruct them, but leave them worse than beasts of the field, so that if a man ask concerning the things of God, they know no what it mean, O, this is a very sad thing. But if we can season our hearts so as to desire the Lord to assist us, he will help us, and not fly from us.
Captain John Bowne did not recover from this illness. He died January 3, 1684. Lydia (Holmes) Bowne lived 9 ½ more years. She died at Newport, Rhode Island on October 15, 1693.
Sarah Bowne, John and Lydia (Holmes) Bowne’s daughter, was the 3rd of their 4 children. She had two older brothers and one younger sister. Sarah had been born on November 27, 1669 in Gravesend, Long Island, New York.
In 1690, twenty-one-year-old Sarah Bowne married Captain Richard Saltar. (Captain Richard was born about 1656.) The first recorded connection between Richard Saltar and the Bowne family is when Richard Saltar witnessed a deed between John Bowne’s widow, Lydia, and the Native Americans. Lydia bought 500 acres for the sum of seven pounds.
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