Low families from Scotland.

[mickmartindale]

Hi,
    I am trying to find any Low decendants for my David Deur Low. B1834 in Scotland.
My wifes grandmother said his propper name was David Alister McAllister McGregor Duer Low. but I can only find his name every being David Duer Low. He sailed to Hartlepool round about 1850s on his own boat. He was the first lighthouse keeper in Hartlepool, and I have just about all his family in the town but want to know more about David.

[lowsearch]

Hi - I know it's 11 years since the question was asked, but I'll post what I know for the benefit of anyone else who is interested:

David Low was my gt gt gf, and was born about 1834.  There are no records of his early life that I have found, but he married Alice Maugham/Maughan in Sunderland in Jan 1855 and signed the marriage register himself as "David Dewar" of Scotland, giving his father as John Dewar, farm servant.  Alice was only recently turned 16 at the time, although she was shown as 18 in the register, and their addresses were both given as "Low Street", Sunderland (David was probably lodging with her family).  David and Alice had two daughters, Alice and Jane, in Sunderland before moving to Hartlepool, where Isabella was born in 1859.

The 1861 Census shows him aboard the "John" of Hartlepool as an able-bodied seaman, the ship being off Lowestoft and his family at home in Hartlepool.  The Census shows that he gave his place of birth as Montrose, but research on the name John Dewar shows that he was more likely born in the farming hamlets of Fern or Deucher, about 15 miles inland from Montrose, and that his paternal grandmother was probably Elspeth McGregor (bearing out the source of one of the above forenames).

Two more daughters and four sons were born in Hartlepool up to 1874, and all nine children were registered as Low or Lowe, indicating that he changed his surname to Low shortly after his marriage (Alice being born in December 1855), and later became known as David Dewar Low.

His occupation in the 1871 Census was also recorded as "mariner", but by 1881 he was recorded as "Lighthouse Keeper" (but certainly not the first in Hartlepool).  He was Keeper of the Old Pier Lighthouse when he died in Jan 1889, having been in a coma for two weeks after hitting his head in a fall down the stairs at home just as he was about to leave for the lighthouse on New year's Night.

Although one of his sons was called David Dewar Low, "Duer" only appears for the first time after David the elder's death, and probably came from a phonetic interpretation of the name given by Alice Maughan to the registrar in 1889, since Alice was illierate and wouldn't have been able to give the correct spelling.  A grandson was called David Duer Low in 1901, by which time "Duer" had obviously become the accepted spelling of the name.

There appears to be quite a lot of "family lore" about David Low, nearly all of which appears to be unfounded in the light of research carried out, so I suspect that he may have enjoyed telling stories to his children which were passed on to later generations as "facts"!

As for his children, they are all easily traceable except for Jane and Clementina.  I have no idea what happened to Jane after 1871, but Clementina committed suicide, aged 18, on the night of 20 Nov 1884 by throwing herself into the sea, her body never being recovered (and hence no death certificate being available).

Dave

[lowsearch]

By way of a follow-up, I have since discovered that the missing Jane Ann appears to have eloped when she was seventeen and married a Joseph Prest in Guisborough in 1874.  They moved to Hull, where David Low Prest and Alice Low Prest were born (and Alice also died), before returning to Hartlepool about 1879 and having several more children.  The 1901 census shows Jane Ann widowed, but running a greengrocery shop at 67 High Street, Hartlepool.

[Forfarian]

The Census shows that he gave his place of birth as Montrose, but research on the name John Dewar shows that he was more likely born in the farming hamlets of Fern or Deucher, about 15 miles inland from Montrose.

Remember that the census generally asks for the parish of birth, not the place of birth. So he would have been perfectly correct in saying Montrose if he had been born in any one of dozens of farms in the parish but not in the town itself.

However ....

There is a parish of Fern (sometimes spelled Fearn) in Angus, but Brechin lies half-way between Fern and Montrose, and is just about nearer to Forfar than to Brechin, so would be odd for anyone born there to say they were born in Montrose.

The only place I can think of named anything like Deuchers is a farm called Deuchar in the parish of Fern - see http://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/no4662 - so Deuchar and Fern are not mutually exclusive.

The 1841 census lists at Little Deuchar, parish of Fearn, a family consisting of John Dewar, 45; Margery Dewar, 45; and Alexander Dewar, 15. In 1851 John Dewar, 60, is in Deuchar Cottage with wife May (May is often used as an abbreviation for both Marjorie and Mary), 60; daughter Jessie, 28; son Charles, 21; and granddaughter Ann Saddler, 4. I can find three children of John Dewar and Ma(r)y Rattray in the IGI: Alexander, born 1823; James, born 1826; Charles, born 1830, all in Fearn, so I think that is the family. John and May were both listed as born in Glenisla.

John Dewar and Ma(r)(ge)(r)y Rattray were just about old enough to have had a son John who was old enough to father an illegitimate child with mother Low in about 1834. Finding this hypothetical John and proving the connection will be quite a challenge.

I note with interest the baptism of a John Dewar to Charles Dewar and Elspet McGregor in Alyth in 1790. This does not fit with the birth parish given for the John Dewar at Deuchar in 1851, but it's the next parish (albeit Alyth is in a different county from Glenisla) so perhaps they moved from Alyth to Glenisla when John was young enough not to remember.

Which reminds me to ask what is the evidence linking your David Low or Dewar or Duer Low to Dewars at Deuchar?

[lowsearch]

Hi, it's about three years since I last tried to pin down David Low's origins, but everything you have written matches what I have in my notes about his possible/likely family.  John Dewar, his wife, and daughter Janet (Jessie) are also all buried in Forfar, whilst Alexander was living at Gowanbank in 1871 and his death is recorded at Brechin in 1899.

Any evidence as to David Low's actually family is always going to be speculative as his first appearance in the records found so far was in 1855.  Where he was in 1841 and 1851, and under which name, is still unknown.  He may have been born David Dewar, as per his marriage certificate, and raised by another family as David Low (or the other way round), or, as I assumed, he took the name "Low" from Low Street, where his wife's family lived.  I have found other examples of adopted people using one name on official documents and another in everyday life, so it's possible that John Dewar was his natural father and that David is under another name in 1841, and at sea in 1851, making him virtually impossible to trace.

On the 1861 Census Crew Lists, the requirement was to give the "town or parish where born", and I thought it reasonable for David Low to have given Montrose (rather than Forfar or Brechin) as it was the nearest port town to his possible place of upbringing (if Fern/Deuchar), and was probably the one from which he first went to sea.  He may also have lived there as a child, but who knows?  You certainly can't take anything on a census form at face value, so I don't think it odd for a different place to have been given (I've got scores of examples on my tree, some giving a different place of birth on every census!).

Something else of note is that most of David Low's children were named after members of his wife's family - a very rare thing in NE England - which leads me to think that he either didn't know his own family, or wanted to remove himself from them, for whatever reason (illegitimacy?).  If that's the case, he did a very good job of it!

As for other links from David Low to the Dewars of Deuchar, there aren't any direct ones that I know of:  I got there by a process of elimination, tracing the other possible David Dewars backward and forward and ruling them out because they were definitely not the one who went to Sunderland and Hartlepool, leaving John Dewar of Deuchar as the most likely father (always assuming, of course, that David Low's real father actually was a John Dewar, as named in the marriage certificate).  I could well be wrong, but I do state in the notes on my tree that the relationship is still unproven, and may always be so.

[Forfarian]

On the 1861 Census Crew Lists, the requirement was to give the "town or parish where born", and I thought it reasonable for David Low to have given Montrose (rather than Forfar or Brechin) as it was the nearest port town to his possible place of upbringing (if Fern/Deuchar), and was probably the one from which he first went to sea.  He may also have lived there as a child, but who knows? 

I don't think I'd agree that it is reasonable to give a place several parishes away from where you were born just because it is the seaport where you signed on. He could have been born in Montrose, or he could have been born somewhere else and moved to Montrose so young that he believed he was born in Montrose, or he could simply not have been telling the truth for whatever reason.

I take it that you have looked into whether there are staff records of lighthouse keepers?

[lowsearch]

That was quick!

Whether reasonable or not, I have found that it is not at all unusual (in English census records, at least).  As a sailor, he might have given the nearest place to where he was born that another mariner would recognise - he was giving his details to the Master of the ship he was aboard, not swearing an oath in court, and it looks like the Master (a Yorkshireman) wasn't even that sure about the spelling of Montrose, so "Deuchar" would have been fun to decipher!

Regardless of the reason, it's still the only clue available as to David Low's origin - his marriage certificate just says he was from "Scotland", which is, presumably, all anyone in England needed to know at that time.

Most of Trinity House's lighthouse keeper records were destroyed by Hitler in 1940, unfortunately, but it's possible that some may survive in the Newcastle archives.  It's worth a look, but I wouldn't expect to see more than his age, address and sea-going experience in them, bearing in mind he'd lived in Hartlepool for between 13 and 23 years before they employed him.

[jennywren001]

Hi,
Have you followed through on the David Low age 7 living Lunan in 1841? I think this is the same chap who in 1851 is lodging with the Clarks in Arbroath he's listed as Sailor Apprentice - birthplace Lunan. I think his mother is a Clementina Dewar....

https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XYJL-KM1

Jen

[lowsearch]

Thanks very much indeed for that pointer, Jen!  His age, place of birth, occupation, source of name "Clementina", and his father's name, John, are all tied together nicely if he's the right one.  It appears possible, then, that the surname he used to get married may have been the false one, and that he reverted to his real name afterwards.

I'll do the research now to see what else I can find.

Thanks again,
Dave