(II) Thomas (2), son of Thomas (1) Bowerman, was born in Barnstable on Cape Cod, September, 1648, and settled in what is now (1910) Falmouth, on Cape Cod. He and his family joined the Society of Friends early. He bought a hundred acres of land, April 22, 1690, of Jonathan Hatch and Robert Harper, agents of Suckanesset (Falmouth), on the easterly side of the Five Mile river, bounded northerly by the pond and southeasterly by the river. He was town clerk in 1702-04-05. He served on a committee to lay out lands in Woods Hole. He resisted the law obliging him and other Quakers to pay to the support of the Congregational church at Falmouth, and in the winter of 1705-06 was committed to the jail at Barnstable for non-payment of the ministerial tax. From that time to 1728 he continued to refuse to pay “the priest’s rate” and property was annually taken by distraint from him to the value of many times the tax. For instance, two cows taken in 1709, worth five pounds, for a tax of three and some shillings; in 1715 a pig worth three pounds for a tax of one. He married, April 9, 1678, Mary Harper. Children: Samuel; Thomas, mentioned elsewhere; Stephen; Benjamin; Hannah, married Nathan Barlow; Wait, married Benjamin Allen.
