Bathsheba Bowers

Bathsheba Bowers (June 4, 1671 – 1718) was an American Quaker author and preacher. Her only surviving work is the spiritual autobiography An Alarm Sounded to Prepare the Inhabitants of the World to Meet the Lord in the Way of His Judgments.

Biography Bowers was one of twelve children of Quakers Benanuel Bowers and Elizabeth Dunster Bowers, the niece of Henry Dunster, first president of Harvard University. Her parents were from England and immigrated to America, settling in Charlestown, Massachusetts, where Bowers was born and raised. Anti-Quaker persecution prompted the Bowers family to send their four eldest daughters to Philadelphia, which had a large Quaker population. Bowers never married, though her sisters did, and the diary of Ann Bolton née Curtis, the daughter of Bowers' sister Elizabeth who lived with the Bowers family for a brief time, provides what little biographical information is known of Bowers outside of her own writing.

In Philadelphia, Bowers was noted for her eccentricity. Near a spring, she built a small home that the locals called "Bathsheba's Bower" or "Bathsheba's folly" and lived as a recluse. She cultivated her garden and adopted the principles of vegetarian Thomas Tryon.

Bowers published an unknown number of other works, including a biography. The public response, if any, to her work is also unknown. She received no attention from scholars until the late 20th century, especially after her inclusion in the Heath Anthology of American Literature (1990).

When she was thirty-five, Bowers moved to South Carolina, where there was a growing Quaker population. According to Bolton, Bowers believed she could not die. Bolton wrote of an Indian attack:

Bowers, however, eventually did die in South Carolina at the age of 46.