By MICHAEL F. DWYER
Over the years, between school and church, I have made the acquaintance of several Rowe families. Invariably, when I would ask them, “Are you related to —?” The answer was always no. Here are several examples of unrelated Rowe families. Fred H. Rowe (1940–2020) of Brandon, co-founder with his wife Joan of Rowe Real Estate, moved to Vermont in 1972 from Hingham, Massachusetts. They had three daughters, so none carried the Rowe surname.
Richard Wallace Rowe (1925–2008) and his wife Evelyn moved to Vermont from Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1953. They founded the Bel Aire Motel in Pittsford. With Richard’s ancestral roots reaching back into Maine, he was not related to the Rowe family of Chittenden and Pittsford.
Anson J. Rowe (1907–1980) was a farmer and town official in Chittenden for many years. His son Roger and his wife Erma own Lazy Acres Farm on Furnace Road in Pittsford. Erma told me that her husband’s Rowe family came from England. Pursuing that story is the main focus of this article.
Anson’s father, John Rowe (1877–1927), belonged to the first generation born in Brandon, Vermont. For unknown reasons, he divorced his wife Ellen, née Warner, around 1922, and moved to Pontiac, Michigan, where he worked as a machinist in an auto factory. A bizarre story appeared in The Rutland Herald on 4 April 1922:
Disquieting Report. James Rowe received a telegram from Michigan last week announcing the death of his son John. His sons, Charles of this town and Will of Rutland, went there to bring the body home and when they arrived there found their brother alive and well. It seems that it was Thomas Tennian, formerly of Pittsford who was dead and just how the mistake was made is not known for the telegram sent was to James Rowe of Union Street which is his address. Charles Rowe identified the body of Tennian and it was buried there. Charles and his brother returned last Saturday night.
Ironically, when John Rowe died five years later at the age of 50, his body was brought back to Vermont for burial in the family plot in Pine Hill Cemetery. His burial notice in The Rutland Herald lists his siblings but not his four children—evidence of a serious family rift.
John’s father, James A. Rowe (1848–1931), son of James and Elizabeth (Williams) Rowe, left abundant clues in Vermont records pointing to his birthplace in Wendron, Cornwall, England. This begs the question: what prompted James to emigrate? If you have seen the PBS program, Poldark, you will have a strong visual of Wendron and its surrounding area. Tin mining was an important industry through the middle of the 19th century, but by the mid 1870s, many of the mines had closed, resulting in widespread unemployment. The 1861 census of Wendron finds James Rowe, Sr. and four of his sons, Edward, Bennet, John, and fourteen-year-old James, all working in the tin mines. By 1871, however, none of the family worked in the mines. James Sr. turned to farming; other sons, such as Bennet Johns Rowe, moved from Cornwall to other parts of England. Young James went further. On March 14, 1871, our Brandon immigrant, James Rowe, giving his age as 20, wed in the parish church in Wendron, to 18-year-old Anne Lukey, daughter of a deceased miner. James signed the marriage register with a mark. With a child already on the way, just a month later they boarded the iron-paddler steamer, Great Western, out of Liverpool. The 220-foot vessel carried 289 passengers and arrived in New York on May 9, 1871. The couple immediately settled in Brandon, where their son Charles was born on August 31, 1871. Nine more children were born to them over the next twenty years; two died in childhood. They prospered as farmers, living mostly in Brandon, with about a fifteen-year tenure in Sudbury.
One of history’s lost stories, which one day may come to light, is what drew James and Anna to Brandon. Perhaps there were kinship networks among the three dozen or so Brandon residents born in England. The Samuel Carder family also had its roots in Cornwall. Equally possible is a connection to Anna, whom censuses consistently report as having been born in Wales and who may have had relatives among the scores of Welsh residents in Poultney.
Anna Rowe (1851–1925) presents a mystery that has confounded her descendants. The documentary evidence clearly demonstrates that she wed under the surname of Lukey, a fact validated in the birth records of at least six of her children born in Brandon, all consistent in the recording of her surname. Why is it then that as her children begin to marry in the 1890s they recorded her name as Anna Mary Morgan on their marriage licenses, not Lukey? Indeed, Anna’s death certificate, with her husband as the informant, records her maiden name as Morgan, with parents Thomas Morgan and Annie or Fannie Hawkins. The same information is repeated in her obituary which also gives her birthplace as Glammorganshire [county] in South Wales. I believe that in mid-life that Anna corrected her maiden name and parentage. Here’s my reasoning: Thomas Morgan and Fannie Hawkins wed in 1835, second marriage for each. Anna was likely their youngest child. If she were orphaned at a young age, she may have been raised by the Lukey family, and as such took their surname. My mother had a similar experience: Born as Marilyn Morse in 1934, she had no choice in being legally adopted by her stepfather Peter Tobia in 1943. Her birth certificate was “corrected” with the Tobia surname, which appears on her marriage certificate and my birth certificate. Upon reconciling to her biological father when she was forty, she henceforth used her true maiden name.
At the time of his death in 1931, James Rowe had 23 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren, many of whom stayed in our area. Six of his grandsons served as his pallbearers: Marcus and Truman Rowe, Robert Ketcham, Wilson, Ted, and Richard Hack.
From the mining villages of South Wales and of Cornwall, we have illuminated one migration path to Brandon, Vermont, with the promise of many more yet to be discovered.
