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John Bowne House

New York, United States of America

John Bowne House

The John Bowne House is a house at 37-01 Bowne Street in Flushing, Queens, New York City, that is known for its role in establishing religious tolerance in the United States. Built around 1661, it was the location of a Quaker meeting in 1662 that resulted in the arrest of its owner, John Bowne, by P

eter Stuyvesant, Dutch Director-General of New Netherland. Bowne successfully appealed his arrest to the Dutch West India Company and established a precedent for religious tolerance and freedom in the colony. His appeal helped to serve as the basis for the later guarantees of freedom of religion, speech and right of assembly in the Constitution. Many of John Bowne's descendants engaged in abolitionist anti-slavery activism. For example, John's great-grandson Robert Bowne was an early founder with Alexander Hamilton and others of the Manumission Society of New York in 1784. Some of its residents such as Mary Bowne Parsons' son William B. Parsons have also been documented as acting as conductors assisting fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad prior to the American Civil War. The home is a wood-frame Anglo-Dutch Colonial saltbox, notable for its steeply pitched roof with three dormers...

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