Well, this is where I admit my greatest embarrassment. This family are my "how not to approach genealogy & family history" example.

The adventure began with Alice LOWE, my maternal grandmother's paternal grandmother. Don't worry, there won't be a test later. Anyway, the information I had from my aunt, K Mary BECK, cited Alice's birth as 5th March 1867 in Leabrooks, Swanwick, Derbyshire. She married George Henry (known as Henry) HOPKINSON on 21st July 1888 in Ripley. They had a son, Harry, in late 1888 and she died 18th May 1889 in Alfreton and was buried 3 days later. Mary had no definite records of Alice before her marriage. So where does her birth come from? How do we know that? Frankly, I don't know. It must be a word of mouth thing, because I don't have it from either of her marriage or death certificates. But we all gamely struggled on with our assumptions.

As you can tell, Alice was dead before the 1891 census, so we could not check her details with it, and finding single women can be difficult, so I tried tracking her down first with her family, because she might be nearer to Leabrooks with them, on the 1871 census and worked forward. Now, there are two potential Alice LOWEs. One born and living in Brampton, not that near Swanwick area, but never mind, and one born and living in Sleetmoor, Alfreton. I bet on the Sleetmoor family. The Brampton family became Mary's bet, which I found out through later notes, not conversation otherwise we might have beaten each other into sense a lot sooner.

Why? Because I managed to find the Sleetmoor ALice LOWE on the 1891 census, after a year or so of assuming she was the right one.

Moral 1: Check after death dates to be sure that you have the right person.

Result: I deleted the LOWEs I had gathered data on from my database, maintaining them only as a backup GEDCOM file on my computer, in case they became of interest to someone else.

Guess what? It turns out that the Sleetmoor Alice is named after a LOWE relative. How do I know? Well, at least two LOWE brothers moved from Tipton area of Staffordshire to Derbyshire. Both had daughters called Alice. Another brother who stayed behind had a daughter Alice, as well. It didn't occur to me to check what happened to these Alice LOWEs, to see if they moved over to Derbyshire or disappeared in time for the 1891 census.

Following a brief foray into census records, my best bet for my 2 greats grandmother Alice LOWE became the daughter of William and Hannah LOWE and the cousin of the Sleetmoor Alice. On the 1871 and 1881 census, they live in Leabrooks, which may be where the confusion came in. Alice herself was a servant in Ripley in the 1881 census, which may explain the marriage there in 1888. However, she is described as having been born in Durham and "the North of England" on the two census entries. I still haven't found a birth or christening record.

Of course, being the cousin of my first choice, she had the same family. I had to import the GEDCOM to my database.

Moral 2: Never get rid of anything.

I should have moved it into a separate database instead of just exporting it, because it took me months to get everything back to normal. But at least I still had it. Nor would I have found out my data was corrupt (now fixed!) if I hadn't been checking through the LOWEs.

History

The first LOWE I have a record for is miner Zachariah LOWE, which is an unusual combination of names that makes his immediate descendants easier to trace as they like to use it. He married Susanna SWINNERTON in Tipton in 1835. All their children were born and christened there, including Samuel and William who moved to Derbyshire, and the surviving Zachariah (there were two boys christened with that name) who stayed and also had a daughter named Alice. Both Samuel and William named sons Zachariah. The first Zachariah died in 1870, probably in the Tipton area (I haven't ordered his death certificate, yet).

But here's where I'm cheating (again). I've found Zachariah on the 1841, 1851 and 1861 censuses. For the first he was ticked as "of the county", but for 1851 and 1861, he is from Shropshire. The 1861 goes so far as to name a place, Parries Lane. So, my Staffordshire LOWEs are probably from Shropshire, not Staffordshire, but I can't find Zachariah earlier than 1835, in Staffordshire or Shropshire. And I have no idea where Parries Lane is.

My Connection

Oh, I hope so!

Files

• Descendency Narrative [PDF]
  Last updated 12/12/2009

Alternative Spellings

LOWE is also commonly given as LOW, particularly in older records I've come across.

Related Families

Families who married into, or were married into by, the LOWEs:

HOPKINSON,
MARSHALL,
SMITH,
SWINNERTON,
THOMAS