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Is your name Lowther?

Is your name Lowther? Do you live in a place called Lowther? Are you researching the history of your family or where you live?

No-one can be sure where the name Lowther comes from. Scandinavians recognise the words from Old Norse ‘lauthr’, foaming, and ‘-å', river: ‘foaming river’. Some say 'lowther' means 'black river'. The peaty water, rushing to join the River Eden, is indeed black and foaming. The name Lowther is first recorded in 1157 referring to land close to the river which gave the land and the family the name they share today.

A comprehensive history of the family is recorded by Hugh Owen in The Lowther Family, published 1990 by Phillimore & Co Ltd, www.phillimore.co.uk, Shopwyke Manor Barn, Chichester, West Sussex, England, ISBN 0 85033 721 6.  My Lowther family, by C.T. Lowther, published 1985 by Garden Grove, California, gives an account of the family in America.

The archive of the Lowther family, the Earls of Lonsdale, is held in Cumbria Record Office, Carlisle, and may be viewed by researchers. Click here to see the latest finds from the Lonsdale Archivist. For those unable to reach the Record Office or struggling with their research, Cumbria Archive Service provides a research service. More information is available on their website.

Useful family history sites include FreeBMD which gives free access to the Civil Registration index of births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales, GENUKI for family research in the UK and Ireland, and Family Search for free family history, family tree, and genealogy records and resources from around the world. All Cumbria libraries subscribe to Ancestry.com. See the Cumbria Libraries website for details.

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