♂Thomas Blower

Thomas Blower (born about 1585) was an Englishman who came to New England in 1635, at the age of fifty, as a passenger on the Truelove from London. He was most likely the tenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Alice Blower (died 1690).

England

Thomas Blower and Alice Frost are said to have married in 1612. Their daughter Alice was probably the Alice Blower baptized at St Gregory’s church in Sudbury, Suffolk, on 30 June 1615. She married Richard Brackett, a Sudbury man who had already been to New England, at St Katherine by the Tower in London on 6 January 1633/4, and by the end of 1634 the couple were living in Boston.

New England

On 19 September 1635 Thomas Blower, aged 50, was entered at London on the list of passengers to be carried to New England on the Truelove, whose master was John Gibbs. His wife is said to have crossed the same year. Thomas probably made his home at Boston, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, where his daughter and her husband were living. He seems to have died soon after he arrived, for by about 1640 his widow had married again.

Notes

Sources

The 1635 list is abstracted in Peter Wilson Coldham, The Complete Book of Emigrants 1607–1660 (1987), pp. 166–167, from the Exchequer records in the Public Record Office (E 157/20); he is entered as “Thomas Blower 50”, and his birth about 1585 is reckoned from that age. The marriage in 1612 is from Clarence Almon Torrey, New England Marriages Prior to 1700, p. 165, whose entry gives “BLOWER, Thomas (at Boston 1640) & Alice [FROST]; 1612”, citing a published Stevens–Miller ancestry. The daughter’s baptism, her marriage and her parents are from Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins, volume 1, pp. 205–206, in his sketch of Richard Brackett; he takes the baptism and parentage from an article in The American Genealogist (volume 52, pp. 73–75) and prints the mother’s name in brackets, because the baptism entry does not name her. His wife’s crossing in 1635 rests on the Great Migration Newsletter, which states that she and both her husbands “had all immigrated to New England in 1635”; Thomas is the only Blower on the Truelove list. Anderson adds that the younger Alice “may have had two brothers who came to New England”.

His death

The date and place of his death are not known. Anderson writes that he “certainly came to New England in 1635, but apparently died soon”, while Torrey places him “at Boston 1640” and dates his widow’s second marriage to 1640; her own biography gives the details of that marriage.

His parents

The parents shown for him on this site, Thomas Blower and Susannah Vincent, come from an online member tree; no record yet supports them.