Dear Sir,—Whether Coffin was right in making Ebenezer born in 1685 or no, I cannot say, but Rev. John L. of Newbury was son of an Ebenezer, and I doubt if there were two contemporaneous with each other. This John—my great-grandfather, can hardly have doubted his descent from Perceval, since I have books from his library in which he spells his name Lowle; and I have always understood that a silver seal of arms (in my brother’s possession) came from him. My father (as you rightly suppose) had more knowledge on this point than any one else, but I fear he never made any written record of it. If I should find any such, I shall gladly communicate it to you. That you and I are kinsmen I have never doubted since I had the pleasure of seeing you some thirty odd years ago; when I was struck with your likeness to the portrait of my ancestor, the Rev. John of Newbury. As he graduated in 1721, his father must have been born earlier than 1685, one would think, unless, indeed, the parson was as precocious as his son and grandson, both of whom graduated before they were seventeen. But this is hardly probable. Ebenezer’s father, I remember, was named John.
My father had talked with men who remembered his great-grandfather, Ebenezer, as a very respectable old gentleman with a goldheaded cane. Dining once with a friend in Philadelphia, I was surprised to see a handsome tankard with our arms on it. He told me it came to him by inheritance from the Shippens, one of whom had married a Lowell. I believe we have the right to quarter Levesege, one of our forbears having married an heiress of that name. Theirs is a very pretty coat, three dolphins passant, or.
If you are making out a pedigree you must be on your guard, for I have been told that all the foundlings of the city of Lowell (and there are a good many of them) are christened with the name. And it is sometimes assumed. Some twenty years ago I received a letter from a person in New York informing me that he was about to assume the name. I paid no attention to the letter, thinking it a trick (as I am sometimes the subject of such) to get an autograph, but, sure enough, he presently sent me a newspaper in which was advertised a legal authentication of his change of name.
The family came from Yardley in Worcestershire, where, I believe, some monuments of them remain in the churchyard. They were a visitation family. I hoped to visit Yardley the last time I was in England, but was prevented by being suddenly summoned to Cambridge to receive a degree. The only Lowells now left in England that I could find are the descendants of Rev. Samuel of Bristol, England, who went back from America—or, rather, whose father went. My father saw him in England seventy years ago, and the relationship between them was recognized on both sides. How near it was I have no means of knowing. I have somewhere, but cannot lay my hand on it, a deed of the first John Lowle of Newbury. It is witnessed by Somebody who came out as clerk with Perceval, and seems to be in his handwriting. How we are descended from Perceval I know not, but Ebenezer must have known who his grandfather was, and his son would hardly have ventured (in those more scrupulous days) to have assumed arms that did not belong to him. Perceval wrote some verses (neither better nor worse than such usually are) on the death of the first Governor Winthrop. You will find them (with a palpable error or two of copier or printer) in the appendix to the second volume of Winthrop’s “Life and Letters.”
I remain,
Very truly yours,
J. R. Lowell.
Elmwood, 23d July, 1875.
Dear Sir,—I have no doubt you are right in putting the birth of Ebenezer L. in 1675. My father in his family Bible says he died “in 1711 æt. 36.” The faded ink shows that this was written many years ago, and I have no doubt he had authority for it. He goes on to say that his widow “married Philip Bougardus, Esq., and died 1761, leaving one daughter married to Eneas Mackay.”
I have searched in vain for a bundle of pedigrees (collected by my father) which seem to have gone astray during my two years’ absence in Europe. They carried the family back to the thirteenth century (I think), and were obtained from the Heralds’ Office.
I don’t wonder you think the blunted arrows unsightly. They are all wrong. The arms are a hand grasping three crossbow bolts, a very different thing, and with very formidable points to them, as I trust those of the family will always have. I brought home three of them from Germany in ’52. They are shaped thus