Nathaniel Dow

• General Notes
  • Nathaniel was for many years a pensioner of Walden, Vermont, with his brother, ancestor of the entire Dow family of Walden, Vermont, giver of the name Dow's, still a hamlet of Walden.
    Gilmanton civic records are detached. Nathaniel appears in 1775 to sign the Association Test. In 1793 Nathaniel Dow appears as a new name of the tax list. Perhaps he did not live in town from 1782 to 1793. His military experience begins in 1775 under Captain Moody and Colonel Badger for New York State service. He is almost always in the same company with Benjamin Dow, his brother, and Jonathan Dow. Nathaniel receipts for ten pounds in the Crown Point campaign. Again he receipts for thirty-six pounds and a half pint of rum. The other Dows got the same. On July 6, 1780, he is found serving in Worcester County, Massachusetts. Coming home at the end of the war, he married Esther Gilman in Belmont, Vermont. It must have been some years later that they bought a farm in what soon became Walden, Vermont. The familiy moved there not earlier than 1794, not later than 1801. His nephew arrived in 1797 and that was probably the date for all. Here he was a farmer, active to old age. A grandson living in 1922 recalled him clearly.