• Submitting family trees for archiving, reference and family building,
• Joining the DNA project (apart from the fact that we need as many Y chromosome DNA lineages sampled as possible—that is men with the Bowes and Bowe surnames or a variant—we especially need more Bowes and Bowe Y DNA from England!),
• Collecting local information into spreadsheets (we especially like non-copyrighted data that can go in the website),
• Participating in various special interest Facebook groups set up for this one-name study,
• Joining the groups.io private mailing list, and
• Volunteering in other ways!

Over all these years of research, I'm left with more questions than answers about the origins of this study's surnames. The notes I will provide here will merely begin to provide a rough framework concerning many unresolved topics. They are only a work in progress and I welcome any input anyone may wish to provide.

[Last update 19 Jun 2024, with much more to come.]

England

In England, Bowes and Bowe are currently believed to be separate surnames, each with at least one geographic origin within England.

In contrast to the common belief that the English Bowes name arises from the town of Bowes, surname frequency distribution locates the epicenter of the Bowes name further south in the Helmsley/Pickering area. This does not preclude that some Bowes families may have taken their surname after the town of Bowes if they once lived in the area and then moved; ie, as a locational surname.

Image from Steve Archer's Surname Atlas

The English Bowe are from the Cumberland area, but the name's specific geographic and linguistic derivation are not yet clear. A devoted researcher who studied this group for years has passed away without publishing his work online. A fellow English Bowe researcher to him told me that the English Bowe records rarely ever show the Bowes surname as a variant of their name. She said the English Bowe are also predominantly Catholic while the English Bowes are predominantly Protestant.

Ireland

In Ireland, Bowes is a variant of Bowe, which according to Irish surname historians is an anglicization of the Irish name Buadhaigh (victorious). Since Buadhaigh meant 'victorious', it is quite possible there are more than one geographic origins within Ireland, but there is only one pre-Norman origin reference there, which places the Bowe(s) origins among the Corcu Laidhe of Cork (thank you Dr. Paul MacCotter for that clarification).

Scotland

There are, however, Bowes and Bowe from Scotland as well! So far neither documents nor DNA have shed light on whether both or one of these surnames there have a separate Scottish origin or arrived there from an early time from England. So far, based on descendant family self understanding, I believe both of these to be separate Scottish origins of the names.

Known and Asserted Migrations

Due the subject surnames having multiple origins, both within and between countries, and to many early migrations from one place to another, I've found it meaningful to note prominent migrations.

England to Ireland

A dedicated English Bowe researcher was certain that an English Bowe family emigrated to Ireland during Elizabethan times, but she did not retain her source material that indicated this. She did however mention that a book about the Irish landscape architect Patrick Bowe stated his family had come to Ireland as Elizabethans. I have not been able to locate this book reference.

An Irish researcher was equally convinced that some English Bowe had settled on the Crosby estate in Laois, stating that he knew this because there were many of them near where his maternal family lived in Timahoe and "they all knew they were English." He also has not furnished hard evidence.

Ireland to England

Scotland to Ulster to America

Bowes from the Fermanagh and Monaghan areas of Ireland are said by one family to descend from Alexander Bowes, who arrived from Scotland during the Protestant Plantations and settled the townland Crocknaboghil in Fermanagh in the early 17th century. Neither this migration nor the place of origin in Scotland have been confirmed using documents or DNA, but many descendant lines support the understanding that they are Scots-Irish. As far as I can recall offhand, most or all of these known Scots-Irish emigrés settled in America, many originally in Pennsylvania.

Scotland to America

Many descendants of Alexander Bowe (died 1678) now live in America and believe he was captured at the Battle of Dunbar and taken prisoner to New England. Guild member Andrew Milliard contributed this in July 2018 to the Scottish Prisoner's of War Society page about him:

According to, Christopher Gerrard, Pam Graves, Andrew Millard, Richard Annis, and Anwen Caffell, in, Lost Lives, New Voices: Unlocking the Stories of the Scottish Soldiers at the Battle of Dunbar 1650, (England: Oxbow Books, 2018), on page 252, Alexander is categorized as: “Possible [that he is a Dunbar prisoner transported on the Unity] Bow/Bowe, Alexander. Residences: Charlestown MA, Middletown CT. Appears: 1658. D.1678. Could be the same man as Alexander Bogle.[DR; SPOWS; Ch.7 & 8; App.B] For explanations of the category, abbreviations and references see List of Dunbar prisoners from Lost Lives, New Voices.”

The List of Dunbar prisoners from Lost Lives, New Voices explains the "possible" category:

Possible: men with weaker associations, with a slightly later appearance in the records, who possibly appear on the John and Sara list or where we have failed to find evidence suggestive of their status as Scots and/or prisoners.