STRASMA | LOWTHER | DRINAN | RUDDELL

The Lowthers

    The Lowther family traces its roots to English nobility as far back as the 13th Century when Sir Hugh de Lowther was Attorney General to King Edward I. The king granted Sir High the right to land at Lowther, establishing the estate that has been the seat of the family’s noble tradition.

    But the family’s history goes even further back, according to the family’s web site, to Dolfin, a descendant of a Viking settler, who named the River Lowther which gave its name to the later family dynasty.

    The Lowthers played a major role in the reigns of King Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.
Later descendants migrated first to Ireland and then, in the early 1700s, to America as Quakers, settling first in Pennsylvania and then moving to Virginia where they played a role in the Revolutionary War.

    In England Sir Richard Lowther was born 14 Feb 1532, the grandson of Sir John Lowther, who was captain of Carlisle Castle and twice High Sheriff of Cumberland during the reign of Henry VIII. Sir Richard inherited the family estates at Lowther and elsewhere in Cumberland in 1552 on the death of his grandfather.

    In 1560 he was named Deputy Warden to the lands on the English side of the border with Scotland, and his principal duty was to lead raids into Scots territory. He was knighted by Elizabeth I in 1565 and appointed High Sheriff of Cumberland.

    Though English and the High Sheriff, Sir Richard was sympathetic to the cause of Mary Queen of Scots and agreed to protect her should she enter English territory. In May 1568, after losing a battle in the war for control of the Scottish throne, she arrived in England and Sir Richard escorted her to Carlisle Castle where he protected her until Lord Swope, who was in charge of border security as Warden of the West Marches, arrived to take her into custody. Lord Swope took her to his home at Bolton Castle, stopping en route at Sir Richard’s home in Lowther. Sir Richard was also involved in two later unsuccessful attempts to support Mary. For these indiscretions, one account (Treadway) reports he was twice imprisoned in the Tower of London between 1570 and 1573.

    Despite his earlier efforts in support of Mary, Sir Richard was appointed Sheriff of Cumberland for the second time in 1587 and succeeded Lord Swope as Warden of the West Marches in 1591. He died in 1607 and was buried in the parish church at Lowther.

    The American Lowthers are descended from William Lowther, Sir Richard’s ninth and youngest child. Like many younger siblings of nobility, he did not inherit the power, title, and wealth of the family.   Two generations later, Sir Richard’s great-grandson, another William Lowther, was a weaver in Ireland who had become a Quaker. He died in 1727 in Ireland.

    His son, still another William, was born in about 1693 in Kings County, Ireland. He and his wife Martha and family emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1729 along with their six children. According to Randy Treadway, they were known as English Quakers, and were recorded in the Abington Quaker Monthly Meeting Records.They settled near Doylestown, Bucks County, Pennsylviania, and owned a large tract of land there known as Lowther Plantation.

    Robert Lowther, their eldest son, was born in 1713 in Westmeath, Ireland. Once in America, he married Aquilla Reese in 1735. She was the daughter of Joseph and Rebecca Reese. Though both Robert and Aquilla were raised as Quakers, they were married in the First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. The findagrave web site for Robert reports: Robert's father disowned him for renouncing his Quaker origins.

    Robert died in about 1789 in Hacker’s Creek, Lewis County, Virginia (now West Virginia). The date of Aquilla’s death is uncertain.

    Robert and Aquilla had 10 children, including William who was born 22 Dec 1742 in Albemarle County, Virginia. He married Sudna Hughes on 1June 1763; she was born about 1748, the daughter of Thomas and Susanna Hughes.

    Minnie Kendall Lowther reports that the Hughes were Welsh in origin and traveled to America with the Lowthers. Others list Thomas Hughes’ birthplace in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ireland. He is reported to have been killed by Indians at Hacker’s Creek, Virginia, in 1778.

    William Beamer Lowther was captain of a Virginia militia company in an 1774 war with Indian tribes in Virginia and Ohio, and, in 1781 he was commissioned a major in the militia by General George Rogers Clark. He was in charge of a line of scouts along the Ohio River, protecting settlements there. He rose to the rank of Colonel. Later he was a Justice of the Peace, the first Sheriff of Harrison and Wood Counties, and a member of the Virginia General Assembly.

    William and Sudna had seven children, including Robert, who was born 1 October 1765. William died in Ritchie County, Virginia, on 28 October 1814. His wife Sudna died there in 1829.

    Their son Robert married Catherine Cain 21 January 1787. He served as a sergeant with the Sixth Virginia Rifle Regiment in the War of 1812. He died 16 November 1832 from a fall while re-roofing his late father's cabin near West Milford in Harrison County.

    Robert and Catherine had 10 children, the old being William Beamer Lowther, who was born 4 Mar 1787, West Milford, Harrison Co, Virginia, later West Virginia.

    William married Margaret Coburn 29 August 1809 in Harrison County. They had 11 children, including Lemuel, their second born, who was born 25 January 1811. William died 19 Oct 1867 at the age of 80.

    Lemuel Lowther was a boot and shoe maker living in Leonidas, Michigan, when he enlisted on 10 May 1863 as a private in Company I of the 9th Michigan Cavalry. His service records shows that he was 45 years old when he enlisted, but in reality he was 53. This correct age is reflected in later disability records.

    Lemuel had married Abigail Reid (or Reed) in Knox County, Ohio, on 20 September 1840. Their first four children were born there, and then they moved to Leonidas, Michigan, before the birth of their son James in 1853. James and their youngest son, George, were born there. Their only daughter, Sarah, died in Michigan at the age of 4. Abigail's surname, Reid, was carried down through ensuing generations as a son's middle name.

    Wilson Reid Lowther was born 7 March 1843 in Knox County, Ohio. He also served in the civil war, joining the 11th Michigan Infantry Regiment near the end of the war. He married Margaret June Hall well after his Civil War service on 17 March 1878 in Clark County, Illinois.

    Wilson Reid may have moved to Illinois from Michigan with his maternal grandparents, Joshua and Elizabeth Reed. His father, Lemuel, also moved to Clark County in the 1870s before dying at the home of Wilson Reid and Margaret in 1881.

    Wilson Reid was a farmer. He and Margaret had six children. Homer, the oldest, was born on 23 Jan 1880.

    Homer married Ada Laura McConchie, who had been born 24 February 1881. They had seven children, including Wilson Reid Lowther, their youngest son, who was born 26 February 1921 in Robinson, Crawford County, Illinois.

Addendum: The Quaker Lowthers

    William Lowther, father to the William Lowther who emigrated to America from Ireland, became a Quaker in 1675. (This was likely after the death of his first wife, Jane Kelso, who was the daughter of a Scottish minister, possibly Presbyterian.) William and his second wife, Isabel Lancaster, had six children, including William, born in 1694.)

    The Quaker congregational records for Westmeath contain an entry dated 4 April 1713: Joshua Clibborn, John Russell and Benjamin Paruin are to see what William Lowther has done to clear friends and Truth of his son William’s evil actions and bring it to this meeting friends having several times hereto desired him to do it. An entry the following month adds: 22 May 1713 - The friends appointed on the other side has brought a paper from William Lowther to clear Truth and friends from his son’s evil acts which this meeting receives and orders it to be read here in the public meeting next first day. No additional information is give about the evil acts or the resolution.

    William the son apparently remained in the Quaker faith. When he and his family emigrated to America, they settled first in Pennsylvania and were recorded in the Quaker records at Abingdon.

    His son Robert and his wife Aquilla Reese were both raised as Quakers but apparently left the faith and were married in a Presbyterian church in Philadelphia.   Robert’s listing in findagrave.com reports that his father disowned him for renouncing his Quaker origins.

    The Quaker women’s meeting records for Buckingham, Pennsylvania, show Aquilla, her sister Esther, and her mother Rebecca being received by the meeting in 1736. Shortly thereafter, however, the meeting record reported that Aquilla “kept company with a man that was reported to have another wife living at the same time.” [This was after Aquilla’s marriage to Robert — was he the man she was keeping company with?] The next month’s entry reports that testimony was presented against Aquilla Lowther, formerly Aquilla Rees, and she was expelled from the meeting.

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(Note: this narrative of the early generations of the Lowther family draws on the Wikipedia article on Sir Richard Lowther, the Lowther Legacy website of Randall Treadway - http://members.tripod.com/~Randy_T/lowther.html, and a somewhat fuller Lowther website of Kenneth Grundy - http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~paxson/balderston/lowther.html. Don Norman has a bare bones lineage of Robert Lowther’s descendants at: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hcpd/norman/lowther.htm. Another, easy-to-use web site is the Doddridge County Roots site — http://www.doddridgecountyroots.com — which is a huge database but has a concise genealogy from Robert Lowther through Lemuel who had a hapless career as a 50-year-old cavalry man in the Civil War. There is also extensive history of the Lowthers in Minnie Kendall Lowther’s 1911 book, “History of Richie County.”)

July 2016
Jan Strasma
rjan@mac.com