The immigrant Thomas Blower has been comprehensively studied by several genealogists including Threlfall347 and Anderson et al.348 The details of Thomas’s children given here come from Anderson et al., while the prose account below is from Threlfall.

According to Threlfall’s GMC50347, “THOMAS BLOWER (Thomas) was baptized 23 April 1587 at Stanstead, England. At the age of ten, his father died. What became of his mother or who cared for the family is unknown. On 19 November 1612 at Stanstead, he married Alice, the daughter of Edward and Thomasine (Belgrave) Frost. She was baptized 1 December 1594 at Stanstead. They probably both grew up in Stanstead which is 5 miles north of Sudbury.

“Within two or three years after their marriage, they moved to Sudbury where their children were baptized. Here they must have lived for at least fifteen years. In 1633, Alice got into some sort of dispute with the church authorities, for on 18 February 1633/4, Alice Blower was charged with Contempt of Ecclesiastical Laws before the Court of High Commission. She was fined £100 which was certainly a ruinous amount, which neither she nor her husband could raise. This must have been cause for a hasty move to London and an appeal against the fine, for on 26 June 1634, Alice Blower, defendant, ‘having long since removed from Sudbury where the offense was given, to London, whereby the scandal was taken away, she was dismissed’. (Calendar of Domestic Papers, Charles I)

“It was this sort of religious harrassment that prompted so many to leave England for the New World between 1620 and 1640. Whatever the reason, in September 1635 Thomas Blower, set sail in the Truelove, John Gibbs, Master. The ship arrived in Boston in late November. He was listed as aged 50 on the passenger list and alone. Ages were often mere estimates and in this case he seems to have been actually aged 48. There is no record of a family with him. His daughter Alice had preceeded him to Boston two years earlier as the young bride of Richard Brackett. Three years later, his sister-in-law and her husband, Edmund Rice, also came to New England to join him.

“Nothing can be found of him in New England records except in the Winthrop Papers there is an extant letter written by one Nathaniel Lufkin to Mr. John Winthrop the elder of Boston from Hitcham, Suffolk, dated 1 April 1640, by which Lufkin was owed £24 by Thomas Blower, the debt having [p. 78] been incurred in England, and Lufkin wished it collected in New England where Blower was then living. Lufkin wrote, ‘...there is one Edmond Rice and Henry Bruning who the bearer knows well who can tell of the debt as well as myself...’

“Edmund Rice was married to Thomasine (Frost), sister of Thomas Blower’s wife, Alice.

“In the Colonial Records is the following:

“‘9 September 1639 -- Capt. Keayne was ordered to pay the 12.10s which he rec’d of Mr Saltonstall for pt of Mrs Blowers N [necessaries?] to the treasurer -- Rec. of the Mass. Bay 1: 273’

“Thus, Thomas Blower must have died about 1639, which explains the dearth of record of him. Other Blowers, including John, his son, also appear in the New England records. The others were probably all related to him. When his wife Alice died is not known.” An account of Thomas’s children follows (though some of these appear to be duplicated; Anderson et al.348 correct these duplications). Threlfall’s sources are given as “Probate Records at Bury Saint Edmunds; Parish Registers; Bishop’s Transcripts; Suffolk County, Mass. Probate Files; Savage; Records of the Mass. Colony, Vol. I; T.A.G. - 21: 238.”349