Week 18 – 2020: Where There’s a Will #52Ancestors

This old expression has a dual meaning for family historians. 

First, it refers to the stick-to-it-itv-ness of genealogists:

  • I will find that missing ancestor

  • I will break that brick-wall

  • I will finish my family tree.[1]

 Secondly, it refers to – well – actual wills. I do a happy dance when I find an ancestor’s will. While the language of a will can be a challenge (all that pesky legalese), the payoff can be immense. As I’ve mentioned before, finding a woman in the records after she marries is particularly challenging. How delightful then it is to find her father’s will which identifies her married name! So many family connections can be found and/or verified through a will. A word of caution: you can’t always count on it to name every child born to the testator as some of them may have predeceased their parent or did something so obnoxious that they got cut out. But even under these circumstances sometimes the testator will name his/her grandchildren – more happy dancing!

One of my favorite states for probate records is Maryland.[2] A couple of lines in my husband’s family came to Maryland in the mid-1600’s and nearly every one of them amassed enough property to make it worth their while to leave a will. I’ve collected a dozen or more wills, even from a couple of women. One fun (or frustrating) thing about reading old wills is dealing with the spelling. In one will you can find same word spelled two or three different ways. Even proper names are spelled inconsistently in the same will. Remembering back to the good old spelling bees in school, there was a right and a wrong way to spell a word. But it was not always thus. As I understand it, it wasn’t until the early 1800’s with Webster’s Dictionary that spelling in America started to become standardized.[3]

One of my husband’s early Maryland ancestors was John Lowe (or Low). Born in England, John came to British America sometime in or before the 1680’s. A Major in the Maryland Colonial forces, John did quite well in the New World. He was a shipbuilder, planter, merchant, justice of the peace, and surveyor. Elected to the Lower House of the Maryland Assembly, he died while in office at about the age of sixty-two.[4] 

When I started drafting this week’s blog, I hadn’t intended to focus on John, but once I got into him, I did an insane deep-dive into his life and the probate of his estate. While I am tempted to tell you his life-story, I will resist for now and focus only on his will and its administration. 

Here are just a few things I learned or confirmed from his will and the administration of his estate:[5]

  • He was quite ill when he wrote his will three years before his death.

  • His wife’s name was Rebecca.

  • He had at least five children: John, Elizabeth, Alice, Elinore, and Rebecca and some of them were minors at the time of the writing of the will.

  • He owned six enslaved persons: Tone, Nan, Arler, Reb, Dick, and Abraham 

  • He owned tracts of land called “Brothers Joint Interest” and “The Guardian” which he left to John and daughter Rebecca, respectively.

  • He owned three ships (my favorite the sloop John and Rebecca) which he left to his wife.

  • He indentured his kinsman Marshall Lowe to Charles Beckworth for five years for training as a shipwright and to convert him to Protestantism.

  • When he died, his estate was valued at 445 pounds.

  • His wife Rebecca married Thomas Mudd sometime before July 1706.

  • His wife Rebecca died sometime before April 1709.

Lots of great little nuggets of information in these few pages! Maryland wills are not indexed, so finding these documents takes a little extra time. As they say, where there’s a will….

 


[1] This last one is a joke.

[2] Yes, I know I am odd.

[3] For a wonderful book on dictionaries I highly recommend Word by Word, The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper. 

[4] George Norbury Mackenzie, LL.B., ed., “Lowe,” Colonial Families of the United States of America, vol. 2 (Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co. Inc, 1966), 466; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 5 May 2020). Robert W. Barnes, “The Lowe Family of St. Mary’s Co.,” British Roots of Maryland Families II (Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co. Inc., 2002) 140-142; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 5 May 2020).

[5] Maryland Prerogative Court, Will book 11 TB:175, John Low; digital image, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C914-GTVJ?i=91&cat=259693 : accessed 2 May 2020). Maryland Prerogative Court, Inventories and Accounts, 29:176; digital image, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C914-2HV6-S?i=429&cat=265626 : accessed 4 May 2020). Maryland Prerogative Court, Inventories and Accounts, 29:300; digital image, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C914-2H2N-W?i=491&cat=265626 : accessed 4 May 2020).

Modern reconstruction of a mid-sized sloop from 1680. William Avery Baker, “Vessel Types of Colonial Massachusetts,” Seafaring in Colonial Massachusetts, Vol 52 (Portland, Maine: Anthoensen Press, 1980), 18; digital image, Colonial Society of Massac…

Modern reconstruction of a mid-sized sloop from 1680. William Avery Baker, “Vessel Types of Colonial Massachusetts,” Seafaring in Colonial Massachusetts, Vol 52 (Portland, Maine: Anthoensen Press, 1980), 18; digital image, Colonial Society of Massachusetts (https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/1970 : accessed 7 May 2020).