4. Four Eve Bowmans and Their Husbands

The thought occurred that approaching the Matthias Lampman marriage from the Eve Bowman point of view might yield results. A search of records from the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries proved useful.

We have already seen that a petition from 1797 states that John Morden married Eve Bowman daughter of Jacob Bowman of Stamford. In our search she was the first Eve Bowman we encountered.

A review of marriage records from Niagara yielded a record of a marriage by Rev. Addison between Adam Beamer and Eve Bowman in Niagara on 6 June 1798. This second Eve Bowman was the daughter of George Adam Bowman, UEL (b. 1731). She was born in 1781.

A third Eve Bowman was identified as the wife of Stephen Beckett (source). She was the daughter of Henry Bowman, UEL (b. 1761) and the granddaughter of George Adam Bowman.

Finally, a fourth Eve Bowman appeared in the record. In 1836, Eve Bouke, the daughter of George Jacob Bowman deceased, of Thorold petitioned for land. She was the wife of Frederick Bouke.

One might speculate that this collection of women with the same name might have been the reason that John Morden had to attend the Land Board in person in York in 1797 to re-submit his land petition for his wife and to distinguish her specifically as the “daughter of Jacob Bowman of Stamford”.

5. Finding a Second Jacob Bowman

John Morden’s petition claimed that his wife was Eve Bowman, daughter of Jacob Bowman of Stamford. The Matthias Lampman story also claims he married the same Eve Bowman. It occurs that both of these could be true if there were two separate Jacob Bowmans, each with a daughter Eve.

A search of the rations’ lists (census-like records) from Newark in the 1780’s yielded two claimants named Jacob Bowman. The 1783 list is an all-family names list. It contains a listing for the family of Jacob Bowman with a wife Elizabeth and five daughters, the youngest of which was Eve. The daughters were aged 18, 13, 11, 8 and 5. This is the Jacob Bowman family of Stamford with the Eve Bowman who married John Morden prior to April 1797.

The 1786 rations’ list is not a full name list. Instead, it lists number of adult males and females then groups children into those over ten years of age and those ten and under. This list contains a Jacob Bowman family with one adult male, one adult female, one child over 10 and four children under ten. This is a different Jacob Bowman family from the one shown in the 1783 list.

This second Jacob Bowman received land in the Township of Thorold and he is identified as “Jacob Bowman of Thorold”. One of his daughters, Mary Grisso, wife of Charles Grisso, petitioned for land as the daughter of Jacob Bowman of Thorold in 1811. There has been no evidence found to date that Jacob Bowman of Thorold had a daughter named Eve.