[upbeat music] [bright music] - [Narrator] One of the oldest homes in New York City: the 17th century Bowne House.

- I was really surprised that there was this history right in the middle of Flushing, Queens, one of the most diverse places in the entire world.

- [Narrator] Just ten miles from Manhattan, the house preserves the history of the struggle for freedom through the eyes of the family who made this place their home for centuries.

- We're able to talk about 300 years of American history from a very personal point of view.

And that's really extraordinary.

- It contains records relating to the early Quaker struggle for religious freedom.

- It's in this room that John Bowne is arrested in 1662.

- [Narrator] Imprisoned for his religious beliefs, John Bowne set a precedent.

- Here is the journal of John Bowne, a firsthand account of what might be the earliest successful fight for religious freedom in the American colonies.

- [Narrator] Centuries later, in this shrine to religious freedom, descendants made the house a safe space on the Network to Freedom.

- This is what we call our underground railroad letter and it survived for over 150 years.

- [Narrator] A house that turned into a museum in the 1940's, when Fiorello LaGuardia was New York City's mayor.

- [LaGuardia] This is going to be a shrine.

It belongs to the world, for what took place here is what the world is looking for today.

- [Narrator] Keeping its history alive and available is now a critical mission.

- Let's go and explore!

[bright music continues] - [Narrator] Treasures of New York: Bowne House.

Funding for this program is provided by the New York State Education Department.

[bright music] - [Narrator] Walking into the house John Bowne built, opens the door to the 1660s, when this was a one room farmhouse and the family was about to risk everything for religious freedom.

- And this is where they held church or what would have been called a meeting house for the Quakers, which was the religion that both John and Hannah had entered into.

- It's in this room that John Bowne is arrested in 1662.

- [Narrator] Museum educator Emily Vieyra-Haley can tell the story because John Bowne wrote it down.

- He's arrested in front of his family.

And when the men come in, it's a company of men with guns and swords, as John Bowne later writes in his diary.

- John Bowne was a religious leader within the Quaker community in Flushing, Queens.

I heard the story about his banishment to the Netherlands for holding Quaker meetings and I was so pulled in by that story.

I wanted to learn more and knew that there was this wealth of information that seemed like it needed to be looked at more closely.

- [Narrator] Lauren Brincat, curator at Preservation Long Island, wrote her master's thesis on John Bowne's Flushing.

- I was really surprised about the fact that there was this history that survived and was intact and right in the middle of Flushing, Queens, walking distance from one of the busiest intersections outside of lower Manhattan and one of the most diverse places in the entire world, that there is this house and it had been lived in by generations of this family that kept everything.

- Most houses do not have the original furnishings.

- [Narrator] Rosemary Vietor is vice president of the Bowne House Historical Society board of trustees and a descendant of John Bowne.

- This table is a very, very early table.

It's been with the house probably forever.

And the story is that it was a piece that John Bowne brought from England when he came over here.

- [Narrator] From the old kitchen table, to a rare 18th century clock, to tea tables, portraits, and even a door knocker made from a saddle stirrup when this was a farmhouse, Bowne house is an unfolding series of eras in New York history.

- When I was young, I remember my grandmother taking me there to visit.

She was a descendant of the Bownes and at that point, you know, I didn't obviously grasp the history.

It just was a very old house.

They were always mindful of the history.

- [Narrator] Outside, in the 21st century, Bowne House is a landmark almost hidden from view.

Just blocks away from Flushing's Main Street, the two-story wood house is nestled between high rises and underneath nearby LaGuardia airport's flight path.

Queens today is New York's largest borough and Flushing is only one of its many neighborhoods.

- Flushing was well, all of Queens was not part of New York City until the late 19th century.

So, it was actually part of Long Island.

Our history is really Long Island history.

And the history was basically agricultural until quite late.

- [Narrator] First Dutch and then English colonists vied for control of lands that belonged to the Matinecock and other Indigenous people.

Land they could clear, and plant was what they wanted most.

- It would have been heavily wooded in some areas.

But then going down towards the harbor of Flushing, towards the bay, apparently was an area where cattle could graze.

It was saute, it was a good cattle graze in the area.

So, it's fairly steep and you would have probably had a lovely view of Flushing Bay.

- [Narrator] A hole cut into a wall shows the original house was insulated with marsh-grass, mud, and even deer and horse hair.

Bowne house is filled with stories of its roots.

- This is a real curio.

And children love this.

It's a crutch in a glass case with a very old label on it.

And according to family tradition, this crutch was used by John Bowne's father, Thomas, to kill a bear.

Children love it.

Who would believe you'd have a bear in downtown Flushing?

- [Narrator] There is no way to know if this is true or a tall tale, but the story is handwritten on a card dated 1893, and an 1897 photo shows the crutch on display in the parlor, evidence of how early the family considered this a museum in the making.

- In the 19th century, they would have a few visitors come in because at that point they realized the significance of the house and the collections.

- [Narrator] The furniture, portraits and the archives are all still here because of the efforts of generations of Bowne descendants who lived here until the mid-1940s.

To understand why the family was intent on preservation, you need to know how John Bowne helped establish the principle of religious freedom, now guaranteed in the First Amendment.

- John Bowne was an English settler who originally settled in Boston, but then relocated to Flushing.

- [Narrator] Charlotte Jackson became the Bowne House archivist in 2016.

- He married Hannah Feake, and sometime after their marriage, she became a Quaker convert.

And John Bowne soon followed suit.

- [Narrator] Founded in England in the 1640s, the Christian, Religious Society of Friends, known as Quakers, was considered radical and a threat to established churches.

Flushing attracted Quakers because its 1645 town charter granted everyone liberty of conscience, interpreted by many to mean freedom of religion.

- And everything was fine until Peter Stuyvesant came into office.

- [Narrator] Stuyvesant, the Dutch colony of New Netherlands' governor, issued an ordinance in 1656, banning religions other than the Dutch Reformed Church.

- The people of Flushing, they issue a kind of a letter to Peter Stuyvesant and it's kind of a reminder document to Mr. Stuyvesant and I have a copy of it over there on the table.

It's known as the Flushing Remonstrance and it's pretty much reminding Peter Stuyvesant about this right that they have, liberty of conscience.

- That was delivered to Stuyvesant and he wasn't pleased.

So, he cracked down on the residents of Flushing.

- John Bowne, he ended up being arrested for holding prohibited Quaker meetings in his home, that is to say, here at the Bowne House.

And we know the saga of his arrest, and we know all this because of his diary.

- [Narrator] That diary, handed down for generations, is preserved at the New-York Historical Society.

- The Journal of John Bowne is a firsthand account of what might be the earliest successful fight for religious freedom in the American colonies, told by the very person that fought that battle.

- So this is the opening where we have John Bowne, his book, written.

[bright music] - [Narrator] Meredith Mann, Curator of Manuscripts and Archival Collections, is one of the few people allowed to handle the fragile pocket-size diary.

- He is writing in English, luckily for us, but he's writing with a script that is not very familiar to the modern eye.

You're holding something that someone held hundreds of years ago.

They carried it with them.

You know, it was a very personal object.

There's an intimacy there which is very moving.

He begins this story of his challenge of religious freedom by saying, "In the year 1662 on the first day of 7th month, the scout, and he was sort of a sheriff figure, came to my house at Flushing with the company of men with swords and guns, where I was tending my wife, being sick in bed, and my youngest child sick in my arms, which was both so ill that we watched two or three with them.

When he was brought in, he refused to acknowledge that he committed a crime and he refused to pay the fee that was the penalty for breaking that law, that ordinance.

And so he was imprisoned as a result.

- [Narrator] After four months in jail, Bowne was banished from the colony.

He decided to go to the Netherlands to appeal.

- And probably something that Peter Stuyvesant didn't bank on him doing, but which he chose to do, was to visit the Dutch West India Company and plead his case before them.

He's brought a copy of the Flushing Charter with him and he is making the case for the right of his town to freely exercise their religion and for the belief in religious tolerance, religious pluralism to be applied to New Netherland.

- [Narrator] He won.

The Dutch ordered Peter Stuyvesant to "allow everyone to have his own belief" and John Bowne returned to Flushing.

By the time he got back in 1664, the British had captured the colony from the Dutch and renamed it New York.

- What he's ultimately doing is, he is establishing an example, a practice of religious tolerance in the American colonies that would go on to influence the British colonies, you know, once New York became New York, and also the framers of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

They had that example of the importance of a plurality of beliefs and the need to protect one's right to freely exercise their religion.

- [Narrator] John Bowne's actions made history and the house was a landmark in the making.

- So from then on, John Bowne is allowed to live his life and by 1664, he is back here to continue his life.

This is the oldest room in the house.

In fact, this was the whole house in 1661.

It's just this one room and the front door would have been over there by those windows, either between them or a little bit over.

And those windows would have been smaller and higher.

But this was it.

This is where John and his wife Hannah lived and a couple of their children.

This is where they cooked.

This is where they slept.

- [Narrator] The Bownes continued to hold Quaker meetings and in 1672, the founder of the society of friends, George Fox, came to visit, a sign of John and Hannah's prominence.

- This corner is dedicated as a kind of little shrine to George Fox.

- [Narrator] Fox preached outside under what came to be known as the Fox oaks.

The trees are gone, but a monument marks the spot across the street from Bowne House.

- So welcome to the parlor.

This was built in 1669, so eight years after the last room.

And as John Bowne's family is expanding.

- [Narrator] By 1693, there were multiple generations sharing the now two-room house.

John remarried twice after Hannah died in 1678 and would eventually have 16 children.

His account book is filled with detailed records of the family's daily life and business, from farming, to selling cider and books.

Those records also show that although he risked his own liberty for religious freedom, John Bowne, like many early colonizers, was an enslaver.

In writing using phonetic spellings that are very hard to read, the account book shows John Bowne made a series of payments to buy what he lists as "a negro girl called Betty" in 1690.

- The enslavement of peoples of African descent was common in the early colonial period.

Enslaved people did a lot of the work that supported the growth and development of New York's economy during this time period performing vital agricultural labor, maritime labor, domestic labor, as well.

- [Narrator] A 1683 property assessment, known as an Estimation, lists enslaved people in many Flushing households, including the Bowne's.

- The estimations for 1683 is evaluating John Bowne and other prominent landholders within the Flushing community: the value of those land holdings, which includes meadows, acres, livestock, but also enslaved people as well.

I ended up looking at a series of probate inventories.

So it's everything from enslaved people that are documented to chairs, livestock, all sorts of things that gives you a little window into the everyday lives of this very interesting and dynamic and diverse community that wasn't just Quakers, that consisted of enslaved people of African descent, that also consisted of Indigenous Matinecock people as well.

- [Narrator] Flushing was one of many early European settlements and towns near the Long Island sound, land that was home to the Matinecock and other Indigenous people for thousands of years.

[bright music] The Joseph Lloyd manor on the north shore, near the town of Huntington, is one of the historic homes the nonprofit group, Preservation Long Island, owns and manages.

- This land is the ancestral homeland of the Matinecock people who are a community that are still present in New York today, and this land had been a place of habitation for people for thousands of years.

There were very different worldviews between the Indigenous people and the European colonists about land possession and ownership.

And the Indigenous people here, in this agreement that they came into with colonizers, more than likely were not of the thought that they were giving over land or that someone would possess it, and that that would result in them having to leave this place and not have access to the land or its resources.

The business of agriculture turned the Matinecock lands into farms and towns using the labor of enslaved people.

- Beginning in the late 17th century, you have members of the Society of Friends that are beginning to discourage enslavement because it goes against this idea about the equality of people under God.

- [Narrator] While Quakers were among the earliest colonists to publicly struggle with the morality of slavery, at the time of John Bowne's death in 1695, there were still enslaved people in the Bowne household.

John left Bowne House to one of his sons named Samuel.

Samuel gave the house to his son John and that John would transfer the house to one of his sons, also named John.

The youngest son, Robert, inherited other property and moved to Manhattan.

- Robert Bowne you know, whose portrait hangs on the wall over there, was the great grandson of John Bowne.

- [Narrator] As the Revolutionary War approached, both Robert and John, like many Quakers, refused military service.

- The pacifist Quakers were viewed with suspicion by both sides, suspicion and hostility.

This is a letter from Robert Bowne to his brother, John Bowne, written from Shrewsbury, New Jersey and it describes the plight of this family, who were essentially living as refugees from Manhattan during the Revolutionary War.

So he begins the letter by saying, you know, I make no doubt you are anxious to hear how it fares with us in this time of general calamity.

- [Narrator] Back at Bowne House, in British-occupied Flushing, John Bowne was repeatedly fined for refusing to serve.

Records show the British army took a fat hog, household goods, and even a pair of boots.

Bowne House survived the Revolutionary War, and a kitchen wing was added to the growing estate.

- [Narrator] In the 1790 census, John headed a household that listed two free white males, seven free white females, and two slaves but by 1800, no enslaved people are listed at Bowne House.

His brother Robert was back in Manhattan, running Bowne and Company printers, and lending support to New York's growing abolition movement.

- Robert Bowne served as a trustee for one of the African Free Schools, which were schools that were founded with the aim of giving free Black people living in New York a quality education.

As you know, they didn't have any public schools at that period.

He was present at the founding of the New York Manumission Society, along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay.

They began lobbying the New York legislature and they would also get legal assistance to people who were at risk of being enslaved or re-enslaved.

- To manumit someone is for an individual to personally give freedom to an enslaved person.

The Quakers were in support of the Manumission Society, which pushed towards emancipation in New York, but it wouldn't happen until the late 18th century, and New York was the second to last state in the north to institute some sort of emancipation law.

And a big part of that was fierce opposition from representatives from Long Island, where there were large enslaved populations here.

The first gradual emancipation law is enacted in 1799.

Gradual emancipation was the system in which the individual property rights of enslavers was prioritized over the human liberty of enslaved people and prolonged enslavement for as long as possible in New York.

[light music] - [Narrator] At Bowne House, the 1800s brought big change and new commitment to abolition, when a great-great-granddaughter of the original John Bowne married into a New York City Quaker family with strong anti-slavery views: the Parsons.

- This is Mary Bowne.

She is the niece of Robert.

She lived in this house also.

Mary gets married to nice Mr. Samuel Parsons, a Quaker minister from New York City, in 1806.

And this is a time where we merge the family names.

Parsons gets added on.

We are located between Bowne Street and Parsons Boulevard.

This is where the name comes from, Parsons.

- [Narrator] Mary and Samuel Parsons actively opposed slavery.

In the leadership role of clerk of the New York Society of Friends meeting, Samuel Parsons authorized the 1837 pamphlet "Address to the Citizens of the United States Of America on the Subject of Slavery."

The address called slavery a stain upon our national character.

Anti-slavery activities at Bowne House included other family members.

Two of Mary Bowne Parson's sisters, Ann and Catharine, were founding members of the Flushing Female Association.

The organization set up a racially-integrated school for poor children, and eventually built a brick schoolhouse not far from Bowne House.

By the time their brother-in-law, Samuel Parsons, died in 1841, anti-slavery activism was a firmly established part of the Bowne-Parsons legacy.

Bowne House itself became home to a larger number of descendants and by 1845 Samuel and Mary Bowne Parsons' children had added a second story with several bedrooms.

The property was also becoming a big business.

- They start something called the Parsons nursery.

They import a lot of trees and plants, a lot of specimens from around the world.

They introduced the weeping beech tree to North America.

Also, the Japanese maple.

There's a Japanese maple right outside our front door.

- [Narrator] The Parsons brothers, Robert, William and Samuel, found themselves in an ideal location on what was becoming known as the Underground Railroad.

- At that point they had the nursery in Flushing.

It was one of the larger nurseries in Flushing.

Flushing is a Quaker, largely Quaker community, even at that point.

It was known as a haven.

And at that point, there was significant African-American population already in Flushing who were free.

- There was a long tradition in the family and in the Flushing community that the Bowne House had in fact been a stop on the Underground Railroad.

But, you know, there are rumors of that kind associated with many such sites, and it's often impossible to substantiate them.

This is what we call our underground railroad letter.

I think 2016 was when we found it.

We were actually looking for documents relating to horticulture and the horticultural legacy of the Parsons brothers.

This letter, which is dated September 28, 1850, was carried by a freedom seeker on the Underground Railroad, on his person, as a letter of introduction to William Bowne Parsons, who was then resident at the Bowne House, requesting Parsons' aid in concealing him and then guiding him on his way north to Canada, or wherever his final destination, out of reach of the slave hunters, may have been.

So, this letter was written by the Reverend Simeon S. Jocelyn, who was a Congregational minister, and also in the year of its writing, was serving as the vice president of the New York Vigilance Committee, which has been described as the proverbial hinge upon which the Underground Railroad in New York turned.

So they were really kind of a Grand Central station for the Underground Railroad.

Jocelyn is acting as kind of a dispatcher, you know, he's deciding, you know, whom should I write to, you know, where should I direct this particular fugitive.

"Dear Sir, I commend unto thee this colored brother who will tell you so much of his story as is necessary to guide your action for his welfare.

Williamsburg is too near the city for his safety.

If he can be kept for a few days perfectly unobserved in your neighborhood, he may after the hunters shall have returned take passage east or north, as may be deemed advisable.

This is a strong case and great care and caution is required.

Truly yours.

S. S.

Jocelyn."

It's a very emotional feeling when you consider the history of the letter, because, you know, this was literally carried on the body of a freedom seeker, you know, a fugitive from slavery.

And, you know, you think it was like held in his hand or, you know, it was in his pocket and it survived for over 150 years, so that we can hold it.

And in particular, I think sitting in this house while you read it is an even more powerful experience because you can look out the window and almost imagine that you can see this man coming down the garden path.

And in 1850, he may well have walked, in front of this very window, like on his way to present a letter of introduction to William Bowne Parsons.

It just feels like a real privilege to be able to hold it.

- [Narrator] A review of other documents produced another astonishing find: An earlier letter from 1842 connecting William's brother Robert to some of New York state's most active abolitionists.

- I think this is the point at which Robert Bowne Parsons, who at that time would have been, I believe, only 21 years old and had recently lost his father, was kind of being introduced to the network and being vouched for as somebody who could be relied upon.

It's written by Lewis Tappan, who was one of the Tappan Brothers, who was a philanthropist, who made many donations to the abolition movement, and himself also concealed freedom seekers in his own house on at least one occasion that we've documented.

And he's writing to Gerrit Smith, whose estate in Peterboro is also a Network to Freedom site and was really one of the major exchanges for the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman passed through there.

And so, this says, "My dear sir, the bearer is Mr. Robert B. Parsons of Flushing, son of the late, excellent Mr. Samuel Parsons of the Society of Friends, and friend of Joseph Sturge.

RBP is a true man.

Affectionately yours, Lewis Tappan."

So, there's actually nothing in the 1842 letter that would clue you in that it was associated with the Underground Railroad, unless you knew the history of the people involved.

It doesn't make any reference to the activities of the Underground Railroad.

It's just if you know who the people in the letter are, then you can put two and two together.

[light music] - [Narrator] Bowne House became the only location in Queens listed on the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom in 2021.

The ongoing National Park Service project cited the letters and the archive as part of its mission to honor "the history of resistance to enslavement through escape and flight."

- Most places didn't they didn't keep documentation because you'd be fined.

You could be imprisoned.

You know, you put your, it was at your peril that you participated in the Abolition Movement.

It was quite a risk, quite a risk.

But they defied again, like John Bowne, in the tradition, they defied what they considered an unjust law.

- [Narrator] One of the most important reasons western long island was a haven was the presence of free Black communities.

Bowne House is acknowledging that with an interactive project.

- So we're mapping out African-American historical sites and sites of significance to the Abolition Movement in Flushing itself.

- So we're looking at a vintage map of Flushing from, I believe, 1872.

Does that sound right?

- Yup.

1872.

- So it still preserves a lot of the sites that were important in the Underground Railroad era and other sites that were important for Black history and culture in Flushing.

- [Narrator] One of those sites, first referred to as "Black Dublin" in an 1856 Flushing newspaper article, was adjacent to the Parsons' properties and was home to a thriving Black community into the 1950s.

- Black Dublin is the name that was applied to a neighborhood pretty close to or you might even say adjacent to the Bowne estate, where a lot of Black residents and Irish immigrants lived together, you know, with some of the town descendants of some of the town's original inhabitants.

But it was generally known as being a neighborhood where Black and Irish people congregated.

- This is all where, this is Liberty Street right here, so this where residents of Black Dublin would have lived.

- Yeah.

- Zion Church.

That's the main church right?

- Yeah.

So then if we can find documents that connect to these names, you know, that are, you know, in a public domain database, then, you know, we can pin those to those locations.

I think it's important that we include maps of African American sites in Flushing because there have been so many demographic changes over the decades that people don't necessarily realize that there was a very large and dynamic African American community, including many free Blacks, going back to the time of New Netherland, really.

And I think it's important that we expose that aspect of Flushing's history.

- [Narrator] Archival assistant Brandon Loo is connecting historic maps and photos to present-day Queens.

- Growing up here, I, just seeing how things have changed and given that I'm only living here for the last 28 years to look at this map and see, oh, this is what this place used to look like.

I tell my friends based on this research I do and I have the images I print out or these maps, I say this, this is what the street used to look like or this is who lived in this area and we have locations of different houses of worship that still exist to this day and just interspersed throughout all flushing and.

Just telling my peers who grew up in this area just a little bit from the history of the community, because right now Flushing is known as big Asian enclave of Chinese, Koreans, some Taiwanese, Indians.

So, it's just a big community, but go back 100, 200 years ago, it was a very different community but was still vibrant and diverse.

- The community that is referred to as the Black community of Flushing, it just grew.

It grew and grew.

You know, it's like any other thing, once you hear about it, it's safe.

Let's go there.

Let's travel in that direction.

Somebody is going to help us, you know.

- [Narrator] Robbie Garrison moved to Flushing in 1954, learning about the 19th century community from members of historic Black churches.

- There were businesses there.

There was a coal, somebody who sold coal.

There was a cleaners there.

There were all kinds of businesses, whatever would take place in a community for the people that were there.

The Macedonia AME Church was built in 1811.

You know, white people didn't build that church.

Black people, their money.

So, everybody who goes there was not broke.

They had skills, they could do things and they could make money.

They built that church right there in 1811.

- [Narrator] The Macedonia AME congregation moved, and the church building is gone.

The Black community that thrived nearby was displaced in the 1950s, when this area was turned into a parking lot.

- This is the map that showed us at the beginning.

The original boundary lines of the burial ground.

- [Narrator] As co-chair of the Olde Towne Of Flushing Burial Ground Conservancy, Robbie Garrison's mission is to preserve and protect a 19th century cemetery, where Black and Indigenous people, and victims of epidemics, were buried.

- It was a part of somebody's farmland that got used to make this burial ground for African Americans and Native Americans.

And that was in 1840.

And once I found out about the burial ground, it was a whole new ballgame, because history is what I love and correcting history so that everybody knows that Black history is American history is very high on my list.

It's very high on my list.

I would imagine it was, it was pretty well kept in 1840.

It was probably pretty well kept and, as I've been told, there were, there were many markers there.

- [Narrator] The burial ground closed in 1898.

The Parks department took over the land and the city later turned it into a playground.

Starting in the 1980s, community advocate Mandingo Osceola Tshaka began tracing the history of the burial ground.

After decades of work and protest, the playground was moved, and there is a memorial with the names of some of the five hundred to one thousand people believed to be buried here.

- One of the things you most proud of being able to have a memorial is actually have proof that the people who still lay here had their name has been brought forward.

At this end, you will find that they are some unknown names and a blank space because we're not giving up.

This blank space is for those names we will yet find.

It still has the inscription of the original day we opened the site to the public in memory of those buried there.

It says between 1840 and 1898, 500 to 1000 people, primarily African Americans, Native Americans, and victims of four major epidemics, from 1840 to 1867, were buried on this site.

[light music] Walking in there now makes me very, very, very proud.

Proud that I had a part in making what's there happen.

- [Narrator] When the burial ground closed in 1898, Flushing was undergoing a major transformation.

It was the year greater New York City was formed.

Flushing was no longer a self-governing town.

It was part of Queens, one of the five boroughs.

At Bowne House, the new century began with no family members in residence, only caretakers.

Mary Mitchell Parsons, the widow of abolitionist and nursery owner Robert Bowne Parsons, had saved the house for the family, buying it at a tax auction in 1886.

When Mary's unmarried daughters, Anna and Bertha, moved in after their mother's death in 1915, they were prepared to honor her wish not to sell Bowne House and to make it a museum.

The sisters gave tours while attempting to add modern conveniences to a very old house.

- At some point the Parsons sisters, who were the last occupants of the house, needed a proper stove.

It was no longer reasonable for them to cook in this fireplace, the hearth.

So, they just brought this in and positioned it, right in front.

- [Narrator] The stove was added by the time of the Great Depression, when the federal government sent out of work architects and photographers to document historic buildings.

They took detailed and often artistic photos.

[bright music] The photographs show how carefully the family preserved its heirlooms.

- It's very early, 1724 to 1730, and it's made by a New York clockmaker, Anthony Ward, who made very few clocks and an early New York clock is extremely rare.

I don't think it's ever left the house.

It would have been risky to move the clock.

Risky to the clock.

- [Narrator] Even the door knocker got a close up.

- The door knocker is unique.

If you look closely, is a stirrup.

This is a, to me, a perfect example of Quaker thrift and ingenuity.

Makes me laugh every time I look at it.

- [Narrator] Stairways later closed off to visitors led to a large second-story.

- The front stairs leads to what were two bedrooms upstairs and the back stairway leads to another area, which they really don't connect.

I think at one point they must have, but they were closed off and that probably dates from a time when they had two separate families living there or branches of the same family and some occupied the front and the back.

So, I guess that would be described as a three bedroom house.

- [Narrator] The house and the sisters were aging in place as Flushing and Queens grew and attracted new visitors, hosting the world's fair and opening LaGuardia Airport in 1939.

- There was a member we had a number of years ago, he went to school in Flushing and he said he would walk by and he remembered seeing these two very elderly women in a Quaker costume sitting on the front porch.

- [Narrator] When the sisters were ready to move out in the early 1940s, the community stepped in.

- The entire community of Flushing raised funds to purchase the house from the Parson's family.

Schools contributed.

Schoolchildren took up collections to, you know, to buy the house, the furniture and whatever else was needed to make it a functioning museum.

So it took a village, literally took a village to do this.

- [Narrator] The house along with the carefully preserved family furnishings and archives became the responsibility of the Bowne House Historical Society and the city of New York celebrated.

- The dedication of the house was a really major event.

Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia came to talk about the donation of the house, and it was 1945.

The radio address, it was really, really very lovely.

- [LaGuardia] This is going to be a shrine.

Yes, it belongs to our city, because it made so much history here.

It belongs to our country, because it is typical of America and it belongs to the world, for what took place here is what the world is looking for today.

- [Narrator] Bowne House opened to the public as a museum two years, later offering free admission and popular tours.

A 1953 Historical Society booklet, "Bowne House: A Shrine to Religious Freedom," focused on the family history.

It even featured a descendant of John Bowne wearing a dress made in the 1800s for Mary Bowne.

Bowne House became a New York City landmark in 1966, but keeping the museum going was a financial struggle.

- I used to pass by the house and wonder what it's all about, other than it is one of the oldest structures in New York City.

- [Narrator] Wellington Chen, a trustee of the Historical Society, who trained as an architect, grew up in Flushing in the 1970s.

- People were leaving town.

Back then, like many downtowns during the '70s people were going to the suburbs.

Crime and safety issues.

- [Narrator] The Bowne House Historical Society struggled to find the funds it needed for roof repairs, and restoration work, and began charging admission for the first time.

By the early 2000s, the house needed more help.

- The house was sagging and so it was about stabilization of the house being the oldest structure.

It's about how you're going to stabilize it and how do you restore something that old.

And then the condition was unknown because you had to do probes behind the wall to take it apart.

- [Narrator] Bowne House closed to the public and in 2003 the decision was made to donate it to the city of New York to have access to more funding.

There was an agreement that was executed with the city of New York, and the city now owns the house.

The Bowne House Historical Society retains the contents, the collections, which are important.

And we're in charge of the mission of the house and the educational programming.

- [Narrator] Bowne House reopened in 2015 and more than 350 years after John Bowne and his family first lived here, the house is again filled with young voices.

- Are we ready to go in now?

- [Students] Yes.

- Yes.

Let's go and explore.

- Well, welcome to the oldest house.

This is the oldest room in the oldest house in the area.

We know the age of the house when we look down at the floors.

What can you tell me about those wooden boards over there?

- They're kind of like spread out a little bit?

- They're spread out.

They're kind of wide, right?

- You'll hear when you're walking around a lot of the wood creaks.

Right.

So take note of the sounds you hear, the smells of the wood.

So, there's a lot of different senses you have to pay attention to.

- It's amazing.

That's like my favorite part of any day that we have, we usually get mostly like fourth and fifth graders, but we've had first graders come in, which is adorable.

We also have high schoolers.

We've had college students.

But I really like working with elementary school level kids because they just are so curious about everything.

- [Narrator] Elise Helmers became Executive Director of the Bowne House Historical Society in 2020 after starting out as an educator.

- I always hear a lot of like gasps and a lot of questions.

They right away notice the creaky floors.

So, they're leaving the modern world and all of a sudden entering the old world, which is really kind of a cool experience.

Oftentimes they see Emily, who is our educator in her period dress, which they love.

We've had a girl came saying that she looks like Cinderella.

So that was very cute.

- He had a real name.

His name is George Fox, and he was an Englishman.

And he helped start this religion, called the Quakers or The Society or Friends, is what they like to be called.

And they called each other friend.

They believed in educating both boys and girls.

And that was a new idea for that time for girls to go to school and get an education.

- [Narrator] Tours are tailored to match age groups and school curriculum.

- In the northern states, they had this kind of realization that they had to end slavery.

Now, the Quakers, they wanted to help the people that were escaping, they wanted them to be free and this family was one of those families.

That they worked very hard to help people get freedom.

There was a whole network.

And what do we call this network?

- The Underground Railroad.

- Yes!

- So I have something to show you that's very unique, and it's rare to find.

This family had this.

And I'm going to ask for your help in reading this.

- Anyone want to volunteer to read?

We need two people.

- We have a lot.

- Dear sir, I commend unto thee this colored brother who will tell you so much of his story as is necessary to guide your action for his welfare.

- Williamsburg is too near the city for his safety.

- If he can be kept for a few days perfectly unobserved in your neighborhood, he may after the hunters have returned, take the passage east or north as may be deemed advisable.

- This is a strong case and great care and caution is required.

- Do you realize that this letter was in the pocket of someone who was escaping from slavery and it was asking for the people here that lived in the house to help him, to help him so he can be on his way to freedom up north in Canada.

So it's very interesting and good that it survived because it's proof that the Underground Railroad ran right through here and that the family was helping on it.

- I grew up in Flushing.

I'm from the area, but I had never actually visited the Bowne house.

Interestingly, I never came here on a school trip.

It wasn't really something that they were going to take the students to.

And that's kind of the goal that we have now, is making sure that schools know that we're open and that we're available and that we're willing to work with their curriculum and it's been working really well.

- [Narrator] Education is a priority for the Bowne House Historical Society, but there is other work to be done here, too, including renovations and making more room for the staff.

- It is very large.

There are many rooms upstairs.

There is a room right above us that's used for storage.

There's a room to the left of us upstairs that is used for all of our textile storage, paper storage, that sort of thing.

And then even above the kitchen, there are more quarters that servants would have lived in.

So, there's a lot of hidden spaces in the house.

- The little office that is the archive office, that was Samuel Parsons' library.

And then the archive room, that was called the Penn bedroom and supposedly that's where William Penn slept when he visited the house.

And we have the furnishings for them, but we can't bring them back, because we need the space for these other purposes.

We really only have three rooms on display.

- [Narrator] The future may bring renovations and expansion and there may still be more history to uncover.

- We've had two or three teams of archeologists who've come in at various periods of time.

These particular artifacts, and we have thousands more, were discovered in a cistern under the floor in the laundry area.

It's like a puzzle, you have a piece here, a piece there.

You don't know how it fits.

All of a sudden, it's like you make a connection, it comes together and, you know, you get a picture.

- [Narrator] Archivists, researchers and future generations of scholars will continue to search for connections.

Some may even be members of the family.

- We know that John Bowne has, you know, gazillions of descendants and it's possible that some people, you know, really have, you know, treasure on their hands.

- [Narrator] Reminders of the Bowne and Parsons contributions can be found throughout Flushing.

Across the street from Bowne House there is a descendant of the first weeping beech tree brought to America.

The Parsons imported the original for their nursery in 1847.

And there are parks, and streets, and schools named for the families.

- I'm surprised by how few people, you know, really have heard of it, given its age and its significance.

It's like a microcosm of New York history and really American history, as refracted through the experience of one Quaker family.

So, it really shrinks it down and personalizes it, but at the same time, it gives you a sense of the sweep of it.

- It was not just about religion; it's about doing the right thing.

This is a beacon, in a way that, you know, you stood up for several hundred years.

This is: we believe these fundamental rights should exist.

- [Narrator] The Bowne House no longer stands alone on a hillside overlooking Flushing Bay, but its place in history is guaranteed, no matter what changes in its ever-evolving neighborhood.

- John Bowne is reaching across the intervening years to show us what life was like right here where we are.

And so I do think that he wanted this journal to be read.

He wanted it to be kept and he wanted his version of events to be saved.

I don't think that he ever would have anticipated that we would be sitting here today talking about it.

I don't think that he could imagine that scholars would be citing to it in their footnotes.

But I think that he would be pleased if he learned that that was the case.

- We're able to talk about 300 years of American history from a very personal point of view.

And that's really extraordinary.

The history of both the Underground Railroad and the liberty of conscience make it totally unique.

There's nothing like it.

[bright music] [bright music continues] [bright music continues] - [Narrator] Funding for this program was provided by the New York State Education Department.

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