Bowes

(newspaper clippings submitted by Arnold Watson)

Jane (Dick) Bowes (1806–1886) was a native of Bathgate, Scotland. She emigrated with her parents, James Dick and wife, to Canada in 1821. James Dick drowned three days after their arrival at Prescott, Lanark County. Mrs. Dick died six weeks later, leaving five sons and six daughters to find a home in the uncleared woods of Canada. The second son (who became Rev. Jas. Dick of Davenport, Iowa) took the father's place in the family, being then a youth of sixteen. The second daughter, being eighteen, became a second mother to the family. In 1837 three of the brothers went to Utica, New York State, to attend college and become ministers.

In 1829 Jane Dick married John Bowes (b. 1797), the third son of James Bowes and Margaret Montieth, of Ramsay Twp. in Lanark County. Their children were Janet Bowes (1830–1869), Margaret (1832–1870), Ellen (1834–1907), Jane Bowes (1836–1925), Agnes (1838–1925), Joanna Bowes (1840–1912), Catherine (1842–1922), John (1845–1871), Lillias (1849–1928), and Mary E. (1852–1894).

They spent 23 years in Ramsay Twp., where Bowes was in the mercantile business. Mrs. Bowes, her sister and two brothers were the first to sign a temperance pledge in Ramsay, where temperance work in Canada began. She also made the first quilted bedcover in Lanark, perhaps Ontario, in 1826. The temperance pledge and quilted bedcover were both introduced from the United States where Jane spent several years of her early life.

In 1852, Jane urged her husband to retire from business and the family moved to Warwick, where “she hoped agricultural employments would be more congenial to his disposition.” Daughter Catherine married John Evans (1825–1904). Daughter Mary married Daniel A. Traxler (1852–1898). The children of both daughters died in infancy. Many of the family are buried in Arkona Cemetery.

During the last eight and a half years of her life, Jane (Dick) Bowes was blind. She was scarcely ever known to complain about her aﬄiction. After her death at the family residence in Wisbeach, she was buried in Arkona.

Chapter 24 of 25 - Bowes Family

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