John Bowden

Portugal merchant who married into a St Kitts slave-owning family. His son John William Bowden has an entry in the ODNB as 'ecclesiastical writer' which describes his father as a director of the Bank of England and his mother simply as John Bowden's 'wife Mary Anne'. The estate of which John and Mary Anne Bowden had the reversion has yet to be identified.

1. Will of John Bowden of 17 Grosvenor Place proved 09/07/1844. In the will he recited a settlement of 1795 under which his late dear wife Mary Anne Roberts and he had settled upon them in reversion or remainder one moiety of an [unnamed] estate on St Kitts and the enslaved people upon it, on the death of his wife's father and mother John Roberts Esq. and Jane his wife (both of whom died many years ago). 'The negroes upon the whole of the said estate were sold many years previously and one moiety of the clear produce of the sale' was paid to him John Bowden. He left the St Kitts estate to his son John William Bowden together with the Priory Farm at Rushey Green, Lewisham in Kent.

2. John William Bowden, the son, who died 15/09/1844, left £99,641 6s 11d when a second probate was granted to his widow Elizabeth in 1894.

G. Martin Murphy, ‘Bowden, John William (1798–1844)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3025, accessed 25 Oct 2016]

1. PROB 11/2001/153.

2. National Probate Calendar 1894.