Born: April 1771, Connecticut

 

Service: Records show him to have been a member of the 1st Militia Company, 5th Regiment, while a resident of Coventry, Connecticut. His young age can be explained by the fact that often young boys served in the “company of alarm” as messengers.

 

Died: 7 February 1860, in Page County, Iowa. He was buried in “Old Cemetery” College Springs, Iowa. A memorial marker was dedicated 14 June 1942 by Shenandoah Chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution, Shenandoah, Iowa. The inscription on the stone reads: “Revolutionary Soldier Daniel Dow, Sr., 1771-1860.”

 

Narrative: The Dow family is of English lineage and was traced back ten generations from Mary Eliza Dow, born in 1838, New York, to one John Dow who died in England in 1561. The father of Daniel Dow was John Dow, who together with two brothers was a pastor of a church in Connecticut for fifty years. A teach of Mary Eliza Dow had heard this pastor give his final sermon in the pulpit he had filled so long. It was from the State of Connecticut that Daniel Dow enlisted in the Revolutionary War when a mere lad. After the Revolution Daniel Dow removed to Otsego County, New York. He married Susannah Douglas, who was descended from the eminent Scot family of that name, reputed to have in their ancestry the famous “Black Douglas” who was one of the characters of The Scottish Chiefs. Daniel Dow was visiting his son, John Dow, in Cattaraugus County, New York at the time of the birth of his granddaughter, Mary Eliza Dow, 16 April 1838. He was away from home for several weeks and when he returned to Otsego County (if that was where he still lived in 1838) he learned of the death and burial of his wife, Susannah. His two daughters had been unable to notify him of her illness; lack of communications of the time was responsible for his sad homecoming. In the year 1857 Daniel Dow, together with two grandsons, William and Daniel, brothers of Mary Eliza Dow, came from new York State to Iowa and settled in College Springs, Page County, where two sons of the Revolutionary War soldier, namely, Daniel, Jr. and Aaron, had previously settled. Although an elderly man at this time, Daniel Dow walked most of the way from the Mississippi River to College Springs, Iowa. He had taken passage on the stage coach but the roads were muddy and travel by foot was faster, so much of the time the passengers were ahead of the stage. In 1858, Mary Eliza Dow came from New York to College Springs, Iowa, along with an aunt and a cousin. They settled inthe are where her grandfather, Daniel Dow, Sr., and uncles, Daniel Dow, Jr., and Aaron Dow, lived. Mary Eliza Dow remembered her grandfather saying he was only in small engagements during the Revolutionary War and his only regret was the he was no sent to the front to engage in more active service.

 

Genealogical Data: (taken from Iowa Censuses of 1860, 1905, 1925; the History of Page County, Iowa, by W.L. Kerkshaw; and the story of the Revolutionary War Soldier, Daniel Dow, which appeared in Clarinda Journal of 15 April 1918. DANIEL DOW was born April 1771 in Connecticut, died 7 February 1860 in College Springs, Iowa, married SUSANNAH DOUGLAS. She died 1838 in New York.