Family:Unknown Lower and Unknown (1)

We do not know who DANIEL LOWER's father really was. Daniel is the oldest related Lower we know about, having been born in 1792. Daniel's own signature from a 1842 land document, shows his surname as LOWER, with an umlaut above the "O". Unfotunately, this inadequate WeRelate.org website will not allow an umlaut on a surname, but will only allow it on a place name. It will not allow it in this text box either! Therefore, it cannot be reproduced here. This Lower surname is always pronounced as LAUER. In some documents the name is spelled LAUER. Some of the later descendants use the Lauer spelling and some do not. One descendant used LAWER (see "Search")! Some records also use LAWVER, and LAVER. Take your pick!

Daniel's origin has not been proved either. Certaintly he was a PALATINE, or from another nearby Rhine River country, such as Baden, or the Kingdom of Wurttemburg (typed without the umlaut over the "u"!). There is a lot of evidence for the Rhine River area origin.

While Daniel is the oldest Lower / Lauer we have connected to this family, there are two others who may be related, who this compiler cannot link to Daniel. However, they are good candidates for membership in the family, since they have the same surname, and they were listed on the same ship, HILAH, which arrived in New York City in 1837, carrying the rest of the family. Perhaps, it was just co-incidence that the ship carried passengers with the same LAUER surname? They were Christian age 23, and Elizabeth age 30. With that much difference in ages, they may have been more likely brother and sister, rather than husband and wife. It would seem to this compiler, that they were too old to have been other children of Appolonia, especially Elizabeth, who was only 12 years younger than Appolonia. Besides, Appolonia's daughter, also an Elizabeth, was in the listing! If they were related, then perhaps they were siblings of Daniel? It might be a "stretch", since Daniel was 44 then. From Daniel 44, to Christian 23, it would have been possible for the unknown parents to have conceived them. Twenty-one years in that era was not unusual.

However, unlike all the other eight who we have accounted for as being on the list, Christian & Elizabeth don't later appear, and in fact disappear after arriving in New York. It was Dorothy LOWER, formerly the head of the genealogy department of the Allen County Public Library, in Fort Wayne, which is a co-owner of WeRelate.org; who assisted in trying to find Christian and Elizabeth, after finding the 1837 passenger list. At the time, Dorothy still didn't know the origin of her own Lower family, and since we both had ancestors in Tuscarawas County, she thought that we might be related. That turnd out NOT to be the case. There is a Christian & Elizabeth Lower in Washington County, Ohio, but their dates don't quite match up to the Christian & Elizabeth on the HILAH. So, the mystery continues!

Therefore, the Daniel Lower family remains a pretty small group of people who carry this LOWER / Lauer surname. While in 2012, the descendants are pretty well scattered over the country, this Lower family was essentially (and originally), an Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois family. Perhaps throw in Kansas?

While Dorothy Lower and this Lower compler struggled to connect our lines in Tuscarawas County, Ohio without success, there were many (unusually in genealogy - almost all men) who were descended from a large Lower Family who were producing all kinds of research. This other Lower family had migrated to Philadelphia in 1737, exactly 100 years before Daniel Lower. Their roots go back to Hans Lauer, born circa 1601, in Hirsten, in the Saarland. This family was only about 50 miles from the Waldgrehweiler area in the Palatinate, where many of the Urbana pioneers had migrated. However, there has been no connection found. This other Lower family (only a few of them spelled the name LAUER) spread all over Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, etc. In every county where Daniel Lower's descendants settled, there were the other Lowers! Dorothy Lower discovered that she was a part of this Hirstein line, which contained many famous people who carried the Lower surname. Many doctors, including brothers who founded a famous medical clinic. A university president. A president of a large insurance complany. Politicians (one the mother of a US Presidential Cabinet member), church ministers, etc. There are thousands of them! A 2002, thick, hardbound book written by one of my contacts, Jack Akerboom, who used to visit Wabash County, from New Jersey, details the lives of many of these other Lowers. These other Lowers arrived in Wabash County at almost the exact same time as Daniel Lower in circa 1848. They settled south of the City of Wabash. And they were not the only ones. There are at least two other Lower lines in Wabash County that Jack and I could not connect to either of our mutual, separate lines. In fact, Dorothy Lower had worked with some of them, without having made a connection any other lines either.

There is at least one more sizable Lower family in the USA, and they originated in the Kingdom of Wurttemburg, and one of their emigrant ancestors settled in Pennsylvania also. They spread across the same areas as the other lines. There is a book in a few libraries which detail their family trees.

In conclusion, if one finds a person with a LOWER surname, they probably originated from Hirstein in the Saarland, except for the lines mentioned, and a few others. There is simply so many more of them.

--White Creek 18:13, 20 August 2012 (EDT)

1. ↑ www.FamilySearch.org.

   The data here is only shown as evidence of someone else's posting on www.FamilySearch.org, and not that we have any PROOF of this marriage.