The Bowie Family

My ancestor William Bowie was born about 1761 in New Kilpatrick, Dunbartonshire, Scotland.  He was the ninth of ten known children of James Bowie, originally of Denny, Stirlingshire, and his wife, Margaret Tyre.  William Bowie’s siblings were John, Margaret, Janet, Agnes, Christian, James, Elizabeth, William (born c. 1757, died as an infant) and Robert.

Brothers John and James Bowie both migrated to the Americas.  John Bowie was an officer, a Major, in the US Revolutionary Army.  He married Rosa Reid, the daughter of another officer.  John Bowie settled in Abbeville, South Carolina, where he owned land and other property, including an enslaved Negro woman named Cate, who was left along with any issue she had to his daughter Rosa in his will.  It is uncomfortable to think of a not-so-distant relative being a slave owner, however I felt that it was right to share what little I know of Cate’s story.

James Bowie ended up in Louisiana, reportedly living with a creole woman, and appears to have lost touch with his family.

On 15 February 1785, William Bowie and his wife Elizabeth Neilson had their first child, also William.  This brought them to the attention of the strict Scottish church.  The pair appeared at the Old Kilpatrick Kirk Session on 27 February 1785 and acknowledged that they were married in an irregular way in Glasgow, without the proclamation of banns, and they produced marriage lines to confirm this.  The marriage date is not recorded in the Kirk Session minutes, there is a gap where it should have been written.  William and Elizabeth paid 6 shillings and 4 pence to the poor in the weekly offering as a fine to absolve themselves of the scandal.  The priest exhorted them to “live as husband and wife in all time coming”, which they appear to have done.

By 28 April 1810, when their daughter Janet was baptised, William Bowie and Elizabeth Neilson had had 13 children and they had another, Agnes, born a few years after Janet, taking the total to at least 14.  I am yet to identify all of them, but the ones I know of are the three already mentioned, William, Janet and Agnes, plus: Elizabeth (born 10 Mar 1787, died young), James (born 24 May 1789, died young), another Elizabeth (born around 1800), James (born about 1802), Anne (born around 1808) and Margaret (my ancestor, born before 1810).

James Bowie, born around 1802, trained as a doctor, joined the army and moved to Quebec, Canada.  While he lived in Canada, he was able to visit his Uncle John in Abbeville.

Anne Bowie married William Robertson.  One of their daughters married a missionary and died in Constantinople.

Once of the son’s had a son named David Bowie, who was the witness on his Aunt Agnes’s death certificate in 1877.

Anne, Agnes and the younger Elizabeth were all letter writers. I have copies of some of their letters to their niece, ElizabethHarvey Macdonald, who I have written about previously.

Going back to William Bowie, in 1785, the parish register and kirk session minutes record that he was a nailer from Dalnottar.  Dalnottar was a small and settlement on the Clyde River at what is now the northern tip of Glasgow.  A nailer was an iron smith who made nails.  It was reportedly very physical work, with each nail needing at least 25 hammer blows to be formed and around 200 nails made a week.  William worked as a nail smith until at least 1810 when Janet was born.

At some point, the physicality of being a nail smith must have become to much for William and he changed careers.  In the 1841 Census, he is described as a grocer’s shopman.  In 1846, he was described as proprietor.  On daughter Elizabeth Bowie’s 1861 death certificate, he was described by daughter Agnes as a Salt and Barley merchant. 

William Bowie did not stay in Old Kilpatrick, although he did not venture as far as his brothers.  In 1787, the small Bowie family had moved across the Clyde to Port Glasgow before moving back to Old Kilpatrick by the time James was born in 1789.  They were back in Port Glasgow around 1800 when the younger Elizabeth was born.  Finally, by 1810 they were in Barony, Lanarkshire, now southern Glasgow, where they settled in St Andrew Square, living at no. 49 by 1841.  William Bowie lived there for the remainder of his life.

In the 1841 census, daughters Elizabeth and Agnes were living with William and Elizabeth Bowie, along with Agnes’s son, James Gordon.  Elizabeth and Agnes remained living together until Elizabeth died in 1861.

In May 1846, William’s wife, Elizabeth, died.  Only a few months later, in September 1846, William died.  His cause of death was given as “aged” and as he was 85 years old, that seems fair enough.  He was buried in the Glasgow Southern Necropolis.

“The Bowies and Their Kindred: A Genealogical And Biographical History” by Walter Worthington Bowie published in 1899 has been a useful source for some of William Bowie’s story.

 

Notes on lineage: Me > Mum > John Macdonald Charley > Constance Mary Macdonald > James Gordon Macdonald > Elizabeth HarveyMacdonald > Margaret Bowie > William Bowie