William Boynton Dow

• General Notes
  • William lived some years in Lowell, Massachusetts, where his brother-in-law, John Dowling, came and found jobs from time to time. The two families remained closely together all their lives. Several years after William married Rooxbe, they bought a farm in Thornton, New Hampshire, where the 1850 census gives him as farmer assessed at $1,000. In 1853 he drops from the tax list, for many years genealogically untraced. A letter from his brother, who discovered California while a soldier in the Mexican War, changed the whole current of the lives of the two families. William and John Dowling sold out completely and crossed the continent with wives and eleven small children. They landed at Healdsburg, California. William took up a ranch and, as population came, building up quite a town, he subdivided most of his ranch. The tract was still known as Dow's Addition in 1929. His wife, Rooxbe, died nine years after coming to California, after which he married the widow Love. In 1883 he was living in San Francisco, California on a competence.