Who was Aaron A. Lowe?

I finally have some time this evening to do a little more looking around in my family history research.  Picking up from where I left off last time, which was looking at census records on my Horne line in Georgia, I found some new (to me) information in the Find-A-Grave database for Orange Hill Cemetery in Hawkinsville, Pulaski County, Georgia.

I started back with the people that I know were in the family, looking for any information on Lottie McCorkle (wife of Orran A. Horne) or her mother-in-law Mary Ann Lowe (wife of Orrin C. Horne).  Last month, I found a newspaper notice in the Digital Library of Georgia’s newspaper collection of Lottie’s death in the 22 June 1878 edition of the Macon Daily Telegraph & Messenger as follows:

"SAD DEATH. -- The Southron says: Mrs. Lottie Horne, wife of Captain O. A. Horne, the telegraph operator and Express agent at this point, died last Saturday morning at 8 o'clock, at her home in this city, after an illness of several weeks."

Today I tried looking for Lottie’s burial in the same cemetery as Orran, but so far I don’t see her listed on Find-A-Grave.  A quick search for other Hornes in that cemetery led me to Mary A. Horne’s memorial page where I learned her birth and death dates were 12 May 1824 and 27 Jan 1888 respectively, which fit nicely with the calculations that I already had in my database.

Okay, we’ve got a few more data points of interest, but that doesn’t answer the question posed in this post’s title.  So let’s look at how Aaron Lowe is associated with the Hornes.  He appears in the same household as Orrin C. Horne and Mary A. (Lowe) Horne in the 1870 U.S. census:

Orrin-C-Horne-1870-US-census

This is page 21 from Hawkinsville, Pulaski County, Georgia, enumerated on 30 June 1870.  Oren [sic] C. Horne (age 50) and his wife Mary A. Horne (age 45) are the two who I’ve been looking for, but in the household, we also see Aron [sic] A. Lowe (age 39) and Nettie H. Lowe (age 29).  Neither Aaron nor Nettie appear with Orrin’s household in 1860 or 1880, so their stay was short-lived (yes, it could have been as long as 19 years; I don’t know exactly how long they were all in the same house).  The book Henry Horn, the Quaker (page 215) notes that Mary’s maiden name was Lowe, and based on the ages shown in this census records, it is possible that Aaron was Mary’s brother.  Unless I can prove otherwise, this will be my working guess.  I haven’t looked for Aaron in other census years yet; that’s next on my research plan.

That leads me to the data I found today for Aaron.  My quick look on Find-A-Grave browsing the entire list of records for this cemetery brought me to Aaron’s memorial page.  The photo of his gravestone there listed his birth and death as 18 April 1831 and 23 Sept 1902, respectively.  Another photo on the memorial page shows a secondary stone for Aaron noting that he served in Company I, 4th Georgia Regiment, from 1861 to 1865.  Cool, now I know a little more about him.

Aaron’s headstone photograph shows another marking that I wasn’t yet familiar with.  Above his name there is an inscription of the letters HTWSSTKS in a circle within a trapezoid.  A quick search on this inscription’s text brought me to an archived discussion that states the letters refer to “a Masonic motto for a specific degree or level of Freemasonry.”  There’s a lot more for me to learn about this inscription now that I have a specific family member with a connection to the Masons.

So, I can’t really give a definitive answer to the original question, but now I have a whole new set of records to look through.


Sources:

  • "1860 U.S. census," index, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org : accessed 12 February 2012), Orin C Horne household.
  • 1860 U.S. census, population schedule, (Hawkinsville, Pulaski County, Georgia, USA); written page 2, printed page 240, dwelling 25, family 25, Wisconsin Historical Society Library, Madison, WI.
  • 1870 U.S. census, Pulaski County, Georgia, population schedule, Town of Hawkinsville, p. 21, dwelling 172, family 172, Oren C. Horne household; digital images, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org : accessed 20 March 2012).
  • 1880 U.S. census, Pulaski County, Georgia, population schedule (state-level copy), family 60, Orran C. Horne household; Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.
  • Kathy Hodge, "Re: [ROOTS-L] On tombstone: KSHTWSST ?," e-mail message from [e-mail for private use] ([street address for private use]), to ROOTS-L mailing list, 27 February 2002, RootsWeb (http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/ROOTS/2002-02/1014871031 : accessed 20 March 2012).
  • Robert G. Horn, Henry Horn of Contentnea Creek (Lulu.com, n.d.), 215; digital image preview, Google Books (http://books.google.com/books?id=QxnxkHU6wmIC : accessed 14 February 2012.
  • Multiple contributors, "Interments," database, Find-A-Grave (http://www.findagrave.com : accessed 20 March 2012), Mary A. Horne memorial page.
  • Multiple contributors, "Interments," database, Find-A-Grave (http://www.findagrave.com : accessed 20 March 2012), Aaron A. Lowe memorial page.
  • "Sad Death," death notice, Macon Daily Telegraph & Messenger, 22 June 1878; online images, Digital Library of Georgia (http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/MediaTypes/Newspapers.html : accessed 29 February 2012), Macon Telegraph: Georgia Historic Newspapers.

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