“Dear Sarah, I am enjoying catching up on your work in Kent, and thank you for including me!
As you know, I visited Biddenden and Cranbrook in 2010 and with your help learned a great deal about my ancestors, although I’m still anxious to learn more. Below is a fairly short overview of the Stow and Bigge family who left Kent in 1635. Most of this comes from the well-documented series of books called The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England1634-1635 by Robert Charles Anderson, published by the New England Historical Genealogical Society in Boston 2009. When I put in a quote, this is where it is derived.
I descend from John Stow (1851 to 1643) of Biddenden and his wife Elizabeth Bigge (1590-1638) of Cranbrook who immigrated to America in 1634. This was the year of the so-called “Great Migration” when the bulk of Puritans left England for America, approximately 15 years after the Mayflower. I believe that they came for religious freedom and that they were fairly established and educated people, although I do not know where or how they achieved their successes.
The clues to their respectability are these:
John became a member of the church of Rev. John Eliot and was made a “freeman” within several months of his arrival in Massachusetts. This usually meant he owned property and had voting rights. Furthermore, he was named a representative to the General Court and became a member of the “Ancient and Honorable Artillery Co.” He became a teacher in the Roxbury, MA grammar school. Roxbury in our time is a downscale and quite rundown suburb of Boston, but it was then considered to be a town where the better-off professional people began to build and live. John Stow was asked to transcribe the Roxbury public records and was given 80 or 100 acres of payment in return. He represented Roxbury as a Deputy to the Massachusetts Bay General Court in 1639. He brought six children with him to live in America and they seemed to make good marriages and lives. One son, Samuel Stow was one of the first graduates of the newly created Harvard College, which at the time was primarily a religious school. Samuel went on to become a minister in Connecticut.
Elizabeth Bigge seems to have an even more distinguished family. She or her children seemed to retain ownership of some family land in Cranbrook, which caused legal action after both John and Elizabeth had passed away. Her mother Rachel Martin Bigge (1565-1646) had married her father John Bigge in Tenterden Kent in 1583. He did not live to cross the ocean to America but died in Cranbrook in 1605. He is referred to in his will as a clothier and left money for the “poor of Cranbrook, “to his apprentices” as well as to his wife and children. When Rachel died in 1646, her will left money, possessions and lands to Elizabeth Bigge Stowe’s children with whom she seemed close as well as some other grandchildren. Her executor was her “loving son-in-law John Stowe.” There must have been hoping for wealth left behind in England, because between during the time period of 1648-1653 family protests arose about the legacies named in the will, whether it had been disposed of properly; also the wills of family members left behind in England were in question. Hopestill Foster was on one side and Thomas, Nathaniel and Samuel Stowe on the other side, went to probate and eventually settled the wills of their uncles Smallhope Bigg and John Bigg in Kent, whose income and land were equally divided among the cousins. The fact that there was something worth quarrelling over seems to establish that he Biggs were people of some means.
When Elizabeth died in Massachusetts, it was written in the church records that Elizabeth Stow was a ”very godly matron, a blessing not only to her family but to all the church and when she had led a Christian conversation a few years among us, she died and left a good savour behind her.”
The legacy of the Stow family in America over the years seems modest but of generally good report. In finding out more of the histories of each of 12 generations in my direct line, I noticed something of interest. Repeatedly, there was a conversion to a new faith causing family separations, moves to new communities and breakages in relationships. First was the immigration to America due to the rebellion of the Puritans. But within a generation, some of the Stowes moved to Connecticut which was more free-thinking than the Boston area. They settled in Middletown CT, where town records show that Samuel Stowe, the Harvard minister, was allowed to preach. However, he caused controversy there and was asked to decease.
Within another few generations, one descendant, Benjamin Stow (who was also a veteran of the Revolutionary War) found his way out of Connecticut and into a small town of Granville, on the border between Massachusetts and Connecticut where he settled. However, before long, he was converted by a new religious impulse, the Baptists. He is mentioned in church records there as a dissident and the family were excommunicated from the Congregationalists. In his older age, he followed the Western Migration and moved to what was known then as the Western Reserve, now near Cleveland Ohio. Strangely, this area turned out to be in the overheated atmosphere where Joseph Smith in 1830 established the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints, also known as the Mormons. Benjamin Stow’s grandchildren became Mormons and two of them later followed the pioneer trek with Brigham Young to settle in Utah. (This is my family line). Religion seems to be a reason for constant change among the Stowe descendants, which at its best shows that they were motivated by ideas and dreams rather than seeking wealth or fame.
I am told that a characteristic of the Kentish personality is to be a bit stubborn, resistant to advise, and persistent in going after what they desire. In that case, I can attest that my father, grandfather and perhaps my own family display the Kentish frame of mind. After all, we are known by in-laws and other close relatives as “stubborn Stowes”.
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