McDowells, from Galloway to America

The monks of Holyrood in Edinburgh, where he lived his last days, called him “Prince” Fergus. They were alluding to his marriage with Princess Elizabeth, one of the many illegitimate children of King Henry I of England. Elizabeth’s mother was likely Princess Nest ferch Rhys of Wales, known to have also borne a son named after Henry.*

Fergus, Lord of Galloway, had been named the first such lord by Scotland’s King David I, whose sister Matilda happened to be Henry I’s wife. Fergus and David shared family ties to the English king and they would remain faithful in their support of him as long as Henry occupied the throne. Fergus and Elizabeth's offspring gave rise to the clan of Dougall, anglicized Dowell, known by the 13th century as MacDowell. Their oldest son Uchtred,** second Lord of Galloway, had a son named Dowall (or Duegald, in Gaelic). It was from Dowall that the McDowell name branched forth.

Galloway was unique within Britain during the early Middle Ages. Geographically, it occupied the southwest coastal border of Scotland, with Ireland in view from points along the sea coast. For four generations, beginning with Fergus, the Lords of Galloway were an independent dynasty within Britain. Royal charters during that time were addressed: “To all good men, French, English, Scots, and Galwegians.” Over generations, though, power ultimately changed hands and allegiances shifted. After the death in 1234 of Alan, the fourth Lord of Galloway, King Alexander II of Scotland forced the leadership of Galloway to be partitioned between Alan's three surviving legitimate daughters. (There had been no legitimate sons.) Alexander’s goal was to secure Galloway under Scottish rule and he was successful. Galwegian independence was no more.

John McDowell, born in 1575 to Uchtred MacDowell, 10th Lord of Garthland in Galloway, initiated the McDowell family's migration westward from Scotland. By 1595, John was living in County Antrim, Ulster, Ireland, as a political exile. He had settled in Glenoe, in the parish of Raloo near Larne, where he met and married Irish native Mary Wylie. Grandson Thomas, son of their first-born Alexander and his wife Margaret Hall, was father of Joseph, John, William, Alexander, and Ephraim, some of the earliest McDowells to survive the Atlantic crossing and make America their new home. 

*“Nesta” had been taken hostage by England during the relentless border wars with Wales. England became her home. The King, already married to Matilda, the sister of Scotland’s David I, married Nesta to Gerald FitzWalter of Windsor, the Constable of Pembroke. She would notably become the female progenitor of the FitzGerald dynasty in Great Britain and Ireland.

**Fergus’s son Uchtred was called a cousin of Henry II, King of England, by 12th century English chronicler Roger de Hoveden. Henry II was a maternal grandson of Henry I, and this would support the genetic link to Princess Elizabeth.

Origin of the McDowells

From History of the McDowells and Connections, by John Hugh McDowell, pub. 1918, C. B. Johnston, pp. 381, 383:

ORIGIN OF THE McDOWELLS.

By William McDowell. The McDowells are of Pictish origin and natives of Scotland, and away back about 200 B. C. one of them, the first that I can find anything about, had a duel with one of the Kings Habakon. You will find another William McDowell—was governor-general of Scotland in 1293, and had charge of Sterling Castle. You are further aware that this name is as old as the Creation. They are not of Celtic origin, they are not Irish; but the best blood that ever landed upon the American continent. They were early settlers in America. A great many of the McDowells that are in America are from Ireland. They went over there the time of the Cromwell settlement, in Ulster. You will find a great settlement of the McDowells near Belfast, along the Legon River, about fourteen miles from Belfast. You can find out there where the McDowells came from that landed there; some in the County Derry, County Monaghan—all over the north of Ireland. You likewise will find out that in Renfrewshire, Scotland, there are a great many, and in Ayrshire, and in Dumfrieshire, and in Gallowshire; there would be very little difficulty of finding out all about the McDowells in America—the McDowells that came later from Scotland. Sometimes the name is spelled McDowall, but after the Scotch Revolution the settlers in Ireland spelled it McDowell. They are all of Presbyterian, Covenanter origin.

Silas McDowell (1795-1879)

Silas McDowell was a pomologist and botanist who discovered or introduced at least fifteen new apple varieties during the 1850s. He was a farmer, scientific observer, mountain guide, clerk of the Superior Court, and a man of letters. Born 16 May 1795 in York District, South Carolina, he was a cousin of Colonel Joseph McDowell of Pleasant Gardens, for whom McDowell County, North Carolina, was named. Son of Elizabeth McDowell (b. 1772) and an unknown (or undisclosed) father, Silas was raised mostly by his maternal grandfather “Pacolet William” McDowell. In 1812 he went to Asheville, where he was educated at the respected Newton Academy. Two years later he returned to South Carolina for an apprenticeship with a tailor in Charleston.

From 1816 to 1846, Silas McDowell worked as a tailor, first in Morganton, North Carolina, and later in Macon County, North Carolina, where he also served a clerk of the Superior Court for nearly sixteen years. On his farm near Franklin, he raised and sold apples, fruit tree grafts, and rhododendrons. He also experimented with native American grape varieties. In addition, he served as a guide to John Lyon, Moses Ashley Curtis, and several other botanists, touring and collecting specimens in western North Carolina.

McDowell was largely a self-taught scientist. He wrote extensively on a wide variety of scientific and literary subjects, including botany, horticulture, mineralogy, geology, zoology, and local and state history. He is perhaps best known as the originator of the "thermal belt" concept (which is a zone on a mountainside where frost and freezes are less common than in the valleys and on the mountaintops).

He gained fame as a writer and storyteller, and was the source of much of Eoneguski, "the first North Carolina novel," written by Senator Robert Strange. McDowell's writings were published in such widely diverse places as Harper’s, The North Carolina Planter, The Raleigh Observer, and Southern Cultivator. His prose landscape sketches were highly praised by James Wood Davidson in The Living Writers of the South (1869).

McDowell married Elizabeth Erwin in 1828. They, along with Silas' mother Elizabeth, moved to his farm in Macon County, North Carolina, which he had purchased in 1820. He had learned about the area from a former landlord, who had been part of General Griffith Rutherford's 1776 Cherokee expedition, and bought the land after the Cherokee cession in 1819. McDowell wrote about this farm in an 1873 letter to Lyman Draper, and said that he had “resolved to buy the Hiddintown in the Cullasajah Valley" while a "romantic youth" in school. He lived on the farm, which he variously referred to as Hiddintown, Sugartown, and the Vale of Cullasajah, until his death in 1879. The name Cullasajah, today spelled Cullasaja and used to designate a small river between Highlands and Franklin, North Carolina, has been variously spelled over the years as Cullasajah, Cullasaga, Cullasaja, and Callasaga. One of the apple varieties developed by McDowell, which is still cultivated, bears the name Callasaga.

(Sources: “Silas McDowell & Southern Apples,” compiled by T. Duane Phillips; and "Silas McDowell and the Early Botanical Exploration of Western North Carolina," by Gary S. Dunbar, North Carolina Historical Review, 1964)

1800 Census, Burke County, North Carolina

McDowell, Charles: 2 [James R., Athan Allen], 1 [Charles Gordon], 0, 0, 1 [self]; 0, 1 [Sarah Grace “Sallie,”] 1 [Margaret “Peggy,”] 0, 1 [wife Grace Greenlee]

McDowell, Joseph: 1 [Hugh Hervey], 0, 0, 1 [self], 0; 3 [Clarissa Mira, Celia, Hannah], 2 [Margaret, Elizabeth], 1 [Sarah], 1 [wife Margaret Moffett], 0

McDowell, John: 1, 2, 0, 0, 1 [self]; 1, 2, 1, 1, 0

McDowel [sic], William: 0, 1, 3, 0, 1 [self]; 0, 2, 0, 0, 1

McDowell, Ann:* 0, 0, 0, 0, 0; 0, 0, 0, 0, 1 [self] 

*This is Ann "Annie" Evans, widow of "Hunting John" McDowell, and mother of Joseph "P.G." McDowell of Pleasant Gardens. 

(numbers indicate free white household members, in order: males 0-9 years, males 10-15, males 16-25, males 26-44, males 45+; females 0-9 years, females 10-15 years, females 16-25, females 26-44, females 45+) 

1790 Census, Burke County, North Carolina

1st Company* 
McDowell, James: 1 [self], 2, 2, 2
McDowell, John: 1 [self, i.e., "Hunting John,"], 1 [?], 1 [wife Ann "Annie" Evans], 1
McDowell, Joseph, Jun. [son of "Hunting John," Pleasant Gardens**]: 1 [self], 2 [John Moffett, George], 1 [wife Mary Moffett], 9
Carson, John: 2 [self, ?], 5 [Joseph McDowell, Jason Hazzard, Charles, James, John W.], 2 [Sarah “Sally,” wife Rachel Matilda McDowell], 12

6th Company***
McDowell, John: 2, 2, 4, 5

7th Company****
McDowell, Joseph, Col. [Quaker Meadows]: 2 [self, ?], 0, 5 [Hannah, Margaret, Elizabeth, Sarah, wife Margaret Moffett], 10
McDowell, Charles [Quaker Meadows]: 1 [self], 2 [Charles Gordon, Athan Allen], 5 [Margaret “Peggy,” Sarah “Sallie,” Eliza Grace, wife Grace Greenlee, ?], 10

13th Company*****
McDowell, William: 1 [self], 4, 4, 0

*Present McDowell County & part of present northern Rutherford County
**Scots-Irish naming tradition of the time assigned "Junior" to the youngest within the extended family, and not the direct son. "Jun." suffix is verbatim from handwritten 1790 census document.
***Western Burke County, including Bridgewater, Lake James and part of present eastern McDowell County
****Middle Burke County, including Quaker Meadows
*****South-southeastern Burke County, including Salem and South Mountains

(numbers indicate household members, in order: white males 16 years and over, white males 0-15 years, white females, slaves)

The McDowells' Legacy of Service

Excerpt of a letter from Samuel McDowell, Jr, of Mercer County, Kentucky, to his brother-in-law General Andrew Reid of Rockbridge County, Virginia, dated 22 September 1813:

"There were seven of the family out last fall and winter [i.e., in the war], and they all behaved well . . . Brother Joseph is [Isaac Shelby's] adjutant-general, and my son John his assistant. William McD.'s sons, Sam. and Madison, and James McDowell's son John are also with him . . . My son Abram was out with the army all last winter; he was with Colonel Campbell at Massasineway. He went out last spring as assistant quartermaster-general from this state; he was taken down with the fever in July last, and has not yet entirely recovered. I could hardly prevent him from going out with Shelby . . . I believe it is the wish of all Kentuckians that the war should be prosecuted with vigor."

Samuel McDowell, Jr, [1764-1834] son of Colonel Samuel McDowell and Mary McClung, had entered the Revolutionary army as a private in General Lafayette's troops, and was present at the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781. He became the first United States Marshall for Kentucky, appointed by George Washington in 1787, and served for twelve years. During the Indian war of 1811, he served under Kentucky General Charles Scott.