According the History of Cayuga County, New York, 1789-1879, By Elliot G. Strorke, Published by D. Mason & Co. Syracuse, NY. John Bowen came into Cayuga County in about 1810 from Dartmouth, (Benjamin had written he was from Uxbridge, Mass. for the Quaker role) The deed from the land was transferred in 1805. Bowen settled a little north-east of Aurora. Benjamin Bowen the son of John Bowen also farmed the same land, as did Benjamin's sons Jesse and Alfred who lived there at the time the history was written. John and Benjamin both died on that farm. Benjamin, died July 26, 1854, age 68.

Northbridge was not incorporated until 1772. John married Phebe Congdon in Northbridge, Massachusetts. The Congdons were Quakers and several are buried in a Quaker Cemeteries in Northbridge.

John purchased the land he lived on in Cayuga in 1805 from a Samuel Baker. After that time Samuel Baker was again living in Northbridge. Samuel may have been one of the Revolutionary War soldiers granted land on the Indian Reservation and in turn sold it to John Bowen as Baker wanted to stay in Massachusetts. It is also possible that Baker returned to Northbridge, where John Bowen lived, from Cayuga and made a deal with John to buy his land in Cayuga or wrote to him from Cayuga offering the sale. Both were Quakers in Northbridge. W.R. H.

A little background on some of the area that now comprises Cayuga County, New York where John Bowen settled. A man named Roswell Franklin and several other settlers who lived in Wyoming County, Pennsylvania, organized The Little Lease Company, a land company in 1788. The company then arranged with the Indians of the Cayuga area for a perpetual lease of the land lying between lakes Cayuga and Owasco for which rent was to be paid annually. In the summer of 1788 Roswell Franklin, Elisha Durkee and others surveyed these lands for the company, dividing them into lots of 160 acres each.

In March of 1789, Franklin, his son-in-law and some neighbors left Wysox, Pennsylvania with their families, traveled in sleighs to the head of Lake Seneca. They settled in what is now Aurora. In September 1788 the men built a log home for Roswell Franklin. Over the month members of the party built other homes on the land leased from the Indians.

 On February 25, 1789, the State of New York by treaty with the Cayugas, purchased all of their lands with the exception of the Cayuga Reservation where the settlers had leased and built. This treaty abrogated the lease The Little Lease Company had with the Indians. There were thirteen homes plus Franklin's on the land that was now Cayuga Reservation. In the late summer of 1791, because the Cayuga's complained, Governor George Clinton sent Colonel William Colbraith, Sheriff of Herkimer County, with fifty men to put the white settlers off the Reservation. Colbraith burned thirteen of their fourteen houses. Franklins was the only one spared. The Indians liked him and his house was very close to the edge of the Reservation.