  |
Robert James Lowry Family
Robert James Lowry & first wife, Olivia Elizabeth (Jeffries) Lowry
Biographical Souvenir Of The State of Texas
F. A. Battey & Co.
1889
page 536
ROBERT JAMES LOWRY, general merchant at Fate, Rockwall county, Texas, and also a prosperous farmer, was born in Mississippi, February 26, 1836. His father Joseph Sidney Monroe Lowry, was born in Mississippi in 1813, was a farmer, and moved to Louisiana in 1837, where he served both as justice of the peace and probate judge for several terms, and died in Arkansas in 1858. Robert J.'s paternal grandfather was of Irish extraction and a soldier in the Revolution. Mrs. Mary Jane (Furniss) Lowry was born in Mississippi in 1817; and by her marriage with J. S. Monroe Lowry, became the mother of Robert J., John F., Samuel M., Charles Thaddeus, M. Matilda, Mary A. and William C., and died in Texas in 1877.
Robert J. Lowry was, you might say, reared in Louisiana, receiving his education in said State. He taught school when a young man. He married in his twenty first year, in 1856, a young lady of fifteen years by the name of Olivia Elizabeth Jeffries, who was born August 1, 1842, and was the daughter of Charles A. and Matilda (Travis) Jeffries, of Carroll Parish, Louisana. Robert was settled down to teaching and farming for a living and was so engaged when the Civil War came on.
He enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1862, Company G, Third Arkansas regiment, Hood's Brigade, composed of the First, Fourth and Fifth Texas regiments and said Third Arkansas regiment, and served with the Army of Northern Virginia, and was in the battles of Seven Pines, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, Chickamauga, seige of Knoxville, the Wilderness, and the several engagements around Richmond. He was never captured, never sick or wounded, and never missed a fight, and was surrendered at Appomattox Court House in Virginia, and there received his parole to go to his home in Louisana, in 1865, and moved to Nacogdoches County Texas in 1869, and then moved in 1874 to Dallas County and in 1876 moved to Blackland, in Rockwall County.
He lost his wife July 19, 1885, and married again the next year, his second choice being Mary, daughter of Arthur and Eliza Smith, of Clairborne Parrish, Louisiana. She was born September 15, 1846. Mr. Lowry had born to him seven children by his first wife-Robert M., Eugene A., U. Travis, Charles T., Olivia M., C. Waine and one that died in infancy. To the second wife no children have been born.
Squire Lowry has served as postmaster of Blackland eight years, as justice of the peace and county commissioner of Rockwall county four years, and has exhibited a general interest in most matters of public concern. He owns a fine farm of 5041/2 acres of black, waxy land, worth $35.00 per acre, three and one half miles south of Fate, which point he moved to in the fall of 1886 from Blackland, and has been engaged in a general mercantile business in Blackland and Fate for nine years. He is a deacon in the Missionary Baptist church of which he has been a member for the past 30 years and he has been a member of the Knights of Honor for the past 9 years.
 |
