Where in England did Thomas Low come from?
The question
Thomas Low (c. 1605-1677), maltster of Chebacco in Ipswich, Massachusetts, heads the Low line that runs down to Harriet (Low) Holbrook. Family accounts bring him from Polstead or Boxford in Suffolk, where a Thomas Lowe married Margaret Tod in 1630, and Mollie’s typescript makes his father Capt. John Lowe, master of the Winthrop Fleet ship Ambrose. Were the Suffolk couple the Ipswich family, and who were Thomas’s parents? An English origin would carry the line back past the immigrant and say who the mother of his eldest children was.
Trail
- 1 Oct 2026The man at Ipswich
The first Low line research (
research/low/Low_Line_Research.md) gathered what New England records say of him. Wm. G. Low abstracted a deposition of 25 Sept 1660 in which he was “aged about 55,” so he was born about 1605 (Wm. G. Low, A Genealogical Quest (1908), and A Genealogical Quest No. 2). An Ipswich grant of 6 Apr 1641 gave him land “in exchange for ten acres due to him by grant unto Mr. Rogers company,” and Rev. Nathaniel Rogers’s company reached Massachusetts Bay in November 1636 (Winthrop's Journal, History of New England, 1630-1649 (ed. Hosmer, 1908)), so he probably came with it (an inference from the grant). He died at Ipswich on 8 Sept 1677 (Vital Records of Ipswich, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849). The will abstracts (Merriam, Ancestors of the John Lowe Family Circle (1901)) name his wife Susannah and children Thomas, Margaret (m. Daniel Davison), John (m. 1661 Sarah Thorndike) and Sarah (m. Joseph Safford). No Ipswich record names a first wife. - 1 Oct 2026The Suffolk entries
V. B. Redstone’s searches, printed by Wm. G. Low, found at Polstead “Thos. Lowe & Margaret Tod married 22 June 1630”; at Groton, Thomas, son of Thomas and Margaret Lowe, baptized 8 May 1631; and at Boxford, Suffolk, John, son of Thomas and Margaret, baptized 2 Mar 1633 (Wm. G. Low, A Genealogical Quest (1908), and A Genealogical Quest No. 2). Thomas and John are the names of two of the Ipswich sons. Wm. G. Low and Redstone both call the identification with the Ipswich man “a probability.” The entries are known only from these printed transcripts, and no record yet carries the Suffolk couple to Ipswich.
- 1 Oct 2026The son’s age
Deacon Thomas Low died on 12 Apr 1712, “a. 80 y.” by his gravestone (Vital Records of Ipswich, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849), which fits the Groton baptism of 1631. But in a deposition of 1676 he is “Thomas Low, jr., aged about thirty-six” (Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts, 6:159), which would put his birth about 1640.
- 1 Oct 2026The Ambrose story
Mollie’s typescript (pp. 70-72) makes Thomas a son of Capt. John Lowe of the Ambrose (Winthrop Fleet, 1630) (Mollie Frances (Holbrook) Pfeiffer, Holbrook-Low family typescript, Books 1-9). The story came from Capt. Winthrop Low by way of Rev. Robert Crowell. Wm. G. Low, who looked hardest, concluded “probably not,” and no record supports it [T].
- 6 Oct 2026The will in print
The Low master research (
research/low/Low_Master_Research.md, first edition) read the will in full in The Probate Records of Essex County (3:175-177; Will of Thomas Low of Ipswich). Written 20 April and signed 30 April 1677, it gives “my Sonne Thomas Low Thirty pownds” and five pounds to “my Grandchild Thomas Low.” That proves Deacon Thomas his son and settles the two dates in the abstracts (research/decisions.md, 6 Oct 2026). If Susannah chose to leave his son John, her pay was to be sent “to Boston or Charls Towne,” probably the root of Mollie’s statement that she died at Charlestown; Merriam has her death at Watertown, 19 Aug 1684, “Aged about 86.” - 6 Oct 2026The Essex court records
All eight volumes of the printed Essex County court records were read (Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts). In 1660 “Thomas Low, sr., aged about fifty-five years, and Sarah Low, aged about twenty-three years,” deposed together about John Lee’s hogs (2:200). In June 1669 “Thomas Loe, aged about thirty-seven years,” deposed about the Knowltons’ spoiled planks (4:156): a birth about 1631/2, which fits his age at death and the Groton baptism. The 1676 age of thirty-six is now the odd one out.
- 6 Oct 2026A third Suffolk baptism, and the Firmin lead
Redstone’s notes in Wm. G. Low’s Genealogical Quest No. 2 (1909) add “Margaret, daughter of John & Margaret Lowe,” baptized at Boxford, Suffolk, 17 June 1632. The rector thought “John” a copying mistake, and no John Lowe with a wife Margaret appears elsewhere in that register. So Thomas, Margaret and John, the three eldest of the Ipswich family, all appear. Redstone calls Boxford “the home of the Tod family,” and John Choate of Chebacco, the Lows’ neighbour, was baptized at Groton on 6 June 1624. The master research adds that Polstead is about three miles from Assington, where Rogers was rector until 1635.
Mollie (p. 71) quotes Redstone on a will of a widow Firmin of St. Peter’s, Sudbury, which “mentions her kinsman Giles Lowe and his children, Thomas, John and Margaret.” At Ipswich in 1647 Thomas Low and Edward Bragg bought a large pasture from Thomas Firman (Waters, Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 2 vols. (1905, 1917), 2:721). Whether the Ipswich Firmans were the Sudbury family is untested. A search the same day did not find the Firmin will online, and Edward E. Steele’s 2020 account of Thomas Low’s descendants (NEHGR 174) proved to be subscription only.
- 6 Oct 2026Mollie’s typescript checked
Mollie’s Low pages were checked claim by claim (
books/mollie/checked.yaml). Wm. G. Low’s letter to her (p. 70) gives his reason for dropping Capt. John Lowe: “in face of the English records about him, had to give him up,” since they put the births of Capt. John, his wife and his two children “much later than that of Thomas Low (1).” The Ambrose descent is now rated disproven. Her quotation of Redstone names the testator “Magaret Firmin, widow,” and dates the will “July 10, 1616” (the master research lists it as “c. 1612?”). Redstone went on: if this was “the Giles Lowe married at Boxford, 1602,” Thomas “his eldest son may have been baptized in 1605 at St. Peter’s Sudbury,” but the baptisms of Giles’s children were not found and “may be missing with the lost leaves of St. Peter’s register.” Mollie adds an Anthony Lowe who married Rachel Cooper at Boxford on 11 Nov 1602. The Choate genealogy, as Wm. G. Low quotes it, says young John Choate was “brought over by Mr. Low” (possible). And Mollie says, giving no source, that Thomas Lowe was elected Overseer of the Poor for Hadleigh Hamlet, “in which part of Boxford lies,” at Easter 1635. No research file mentions that office yet.
Where it stands
Open. Thomas Low of Ipswich (c. 1605-1677) is well documented in New England, and his 1677 will proves Deacon Thomas his son. That he is the Thos. Lowe who married Margaret Tod at Polstead on 22 June 1630 is probable: Wm. G. Low and Redstone call it “a probability,” and the research gives no percentage. That Deacon Thomas is the Thomas baptized at Groton in 1631, and Margaret (Davison) and John the children baptized at Boxford in 1632 and 1633, with Margaret Tod as their mother, is possible. His parents are unknown. The Firmin will’s Giles Lowe is an untested lead, known only from Redstone’s note, and the Ambrose descent is disproven as far as the evidence goes. When Margaret Tod died is not recorded: the master research infers before about 1636, and Mollie says she died in England.
Next
- Edward E. Steele, “Descendants of Thomas Low, the Immigrant to Ipswich … for Three Generations,” NEHGR 174 (2020) (AmericanAncestors.org, or a library that holds the Register; subscription). The most recent scholarly account. It may settle the Suffolk identification, Susannah, and Margaret Tod. Sarah Low, “aged about twenty-three” in 1660, was born about 1637, after the master research’s inferred date for Margaret’s death, and her page names no mother; the two need reconciling.
- Margaret Firmin’s will, St. Peter’s, Sudbury (Suffolk Archives, Bury St Edmunds, Sudbury archdeaconry wills; not found online on 6 Oct; cost not known). If it is genuine and names this Thomas, it gives his father, and it would show whether the Ipswich Firmans were kin. Its date needs confirming (10 July 1616 in Mollie’s quotation, “c. 1612?” in the master research).
- The Polstead, Groton and Boxford registers themselves (Suffolk Archives; whether they are filmed or online has not been checked). The entries are known only from Redstone’s transcripts. Read the 1632 Boxford baptism for “John” or Thomas, and look for the Giles Lowe marriage of 1602 and any burial of a Margaret Lowe.
- The source of Mollie’s 1635 overseer of the poor (search Genealogical Quest No. 2, already read in full text, for it; then the Boxford and Hadleigh parish records). A Thomas Lowe in parish office at Boxford in 1635 would place him there the year before Rogers’s company sailed.