Pennsylvania Indian Traders:Lazarus Lowrey

Lazarus Lowrey came from the North of Ireland and settled in Donegal Township, Lancaster County, about 1729. He took up 500 acres of land about two miles from the site of the present town of Marietta, where he established a trading house; and in 1730 was granted a license to trade with the Indians, and also to sell liquor "by the small." His dwelling-house is still standing. He was a man remarkable for his energy, industry, and courage. He made frequent trading trips to the Ohio country, and sometimes took his sons with him, five of whom became Indian Traders also. These were James, John, Daniel, Alexander, and Lazarus. The father died at Philadelphia in 1755.

John Lowrey made trading trips with his father west of the Alleghanies before 1740. Sometime in 1749 ^[1] while in the Ohio country, he was seated near a keg of powder, to which an Indian applied a match. The explosion which followed blew Lowrey to pieces. His widow survived him, but they had no children.

James Lowrey...married Susanna, daughter of James Patterson, also an Indian Trader. He took up a large tract of land on the Susquehanna above the site of Marietta, and made many trips to Ohio; acting with George Croghan to prevent the Indians there from going over to the French interest. The French Commandant at Detroit offered a reward for the scalps of these two Traders in 1750. In January, 1753, while trading in Kentucky, he was captured, with three of his men and four of Croghan's, by the French Mohawks, or Canawaugha Indians. Lowrey managed to make his escape within a few days; but his men were carried to Canada, and kept in captivity for some time by the Indians....In a letter written by Captain Robert Stobo, while held a hostage at Fort Duquesne in July, 1754, he states that the Indians, under Mingo John, had made an attack upon Lowrey's Traders at the house of Christopher Gist and had taken prisoners, Andrew McBriar, Nehemiah Stevens, John Kennedy, and Elizabeth Williams. Several persons were killed. Kennedy was given to a wounded chief named The Owl, to wait upon him while his leg was curing. The others were sent to Canada. They were employees of James, Daniel, and Alexander Lowrey. Their goods were all confiscated. The losses he met with in these years proved so embarrassing to James Lowrey that he finally sold his land in Donegal Township, and removed, after 1758, to what is now Blair County, Pennsylvania.

Alexander Lowrey, the most prominent of these five brothers, began trading with the Indians about 1744; although he had accompanied his father and older brothers to Ohio before that time. He acquired the language of several tribes, and could talk with his customers readily. At an early day in his career he formed an advantageous partnership with Edward Shippen and with a shrewd and successful Jew of Lancaster, named Joseph Simon. The latter alliance continued for about forty years, and through it, and his own courage and sagacity. Lowrey was enabled to acquire a respectable fortune for those days. He established trading posts at Carlisle, Logstown, and Fort Pitt, and employed a number of assistants in his trading enterprises. Although frequently among the Indians, he was never molested by them but once; and on that occasion saved his life by his nerve and his ability as a runner, In 1763, he is said to have met with the loss of a large quantity of goods by an attack on his train of laden pack-horses, by a party of Indians at "Bloody Run" (now Everett, Bedford County); although from the way his descendant, Mr. Samuel Evans, writes the story, there is a suspicion that the attacking party was the band of "Black Boys," organized by Col. James Smith in 1765, to prevent ammunition and supplies from being carried to the Indians so soon after the outrages committed by them during Pontiac's War. The Six Nations, in 1768, made a grant of a large tract of land covering the northwestern corner of the present State of West Virginia, to reimburse the Traders for their losses on that occasion, and in 1763.

[edit]