John Taylor Dow

• General Notes
  • John located on Little Boar Isle, Hampton, New Hampshire, where he was a fisherman. He moved to Isles of Shoals thereafter and finally to North Hampton, New Hampshire.
    If any romance be built out of genealogical memoirs, it might be of those who lived on the New Hampshire coast and followed the sea. No man knew when he embarked on glassy water, whether he would come back or figure among the missing. Storms were bad and fog even worse. Hundreds of dories put out from schooner for cod and drifted in the fog until engulfed by swell or perished from thirst, hunger or cold, while the parent schooner cruised for days in vain search. In every town along the coast some spot on the dunes was a cemetery with half it's stones over empty graves, commemorating "lost at sea." Every schooner load of fishermen left behind a score of wives and babies, some unborn, as in the case of Jeremiah Dow, half expectant of being widowed or orphaned. It was custom that those who survived should care for the families of those who did not.
    So with John Taylor Dow. His oldest son lost at sea; having a whole brood of his own, he married a widow of the sea, adopting her children and adding more of his own until the total was eleven. In old age he went back a little from the shore, but still within easy walk of the water. No matter how many fish in the sea, no matter how plentifully potatoes grew in the sandy soil, it was no easy task to fill a dozen hungry young mouths. Let us hope he was kind to all his youngsters.