Biography of Jacob, Lower, Jr., pages 819/820.  History of 
DeKalb County, Indiana; B. F. Bowen & Company, Inc., 
Indianapolis, 1914.



Smithfield township, DeKalb county, Indiana, furnished a 
home for many a pioneer who settled within its boundaries 
with no capital save the intelligence and physical 
abilities that were the gifts of his Maker and later 
attained a competency and a position of influence in the 
locality in which he chose to reside that, in after years, 
redounded in an enviable reputation of himself and his 
descendants. Among these old and honored pioneers was the 
gentleman whose name appears at the head of this brief 
review, who was a native of the old Buckeye state but who 
spent nearly a half century of his life in Indiana. Jacob 
Lower, Jr., was born in Columbiana county, Ohio, in 1819, 
and was a son of Jacob Lower, Sr., a native of Holland, who 
married a Miss Sayner. He was reared in Columbiana county, 
there received his education in the district schools and on 
February 21, 1839, was married to Elizabeth Miller. In 1844 
he and his wife came to DeKalb county, Indiana, settling on 
the Henry Rempis farm in Smithfield township, where he 
built two log houses and began life in true pioneer style.  
The development of a farm in this locality in that period 
entailed and immense amount of the most strenuous kind of 
labor, for the land was densely covered with timber, which 
it was necessary to remove before any progress could be 
made in the cultivation of the soil. Here Mrs. Lower’s 
first wife died, leaving five children, namely:  Mrs. 
Melissa McCurdy, of Bucyrus, Ohio; Alonzo, of Waterloo, 
Indiana, Mrs. Catherine Schimpff, of Pleasant Lake; John, 
of Sheridan, Michigan, and Albert, who died in infancy.  On 
January 6, 1853, Mr. Lower married Margaret Jane Holmes, 
who was born in 1828, at Melmore, near Tiffin, Ohio, and 
came to Indiana with her parents in 1842, when she was 
fourteen years of age. Five children were born of this 
second marriage, namely: Isadore, who died in infancy; Mary 
Ellen, the wife of H. M. Daniels of Smithfield township, 
who is represented elsewhere in this work; Perry J., who 
died on March 3, 1909, at Alexandria, Indiana; Dora, the 
wife of Frank Tuttle, of Steuben county, died on January 
23, 1901; Nancy, who died in infancy. The mother of these 
children died on August 30, 1869. Mr. Lower persevered in 
his efforts to create a home in the wilderness where he 
first located, and in this effort was eminently successful 
and in the course of time found himself in possession of as 
fine a farm as could be found in this entire locality. 
Steady industry and rigid economy were prerequisite to 
success, but these qualities he exemplified in a marked 
degree in his life, and he came to be numbered among the 
successful farmers and representative citizens of his 
community. He carved for himself a permanent home in the 
new country, accumulated a reasonable fortune an downed a 
splendid farm, the improvements including a large brick 
dwelling just east of Uniontown on the north edge of Grant 
township. He was a kind neighbor and friend, whom all could 
trust, and who was ever ready to help those in need about 
him. Quiet and unostentatious, nevertheless he could always 
be depended upon in the support of every worthy movement 
for the benefit or uplift of the community. A man of strong 
domestic tastes, he found his greatest pleasure about his 
own fireside with is loved ones about him.  In his younger 
life he was a strong and vigorous man, and at one time 
walked all the way to Columbiana county, Ohio, and 
returned, and on reaching home, found that their baby had 
died while he was away, but of which fact he had not 
learned because of the slow transit of the mails at that 
period.  The demise of his honored pioneer occurred at his 
home here on January 5, 1889, and his death was universally 
considered a distinct loss to the community in which he had 
lived, and which he had honored by his citizenship. He was 
respected by all classes and conditions of people, 
possessing a personality that won for him many friends, and 
those who remember him now speak in high terms of his many 
fine qualities and his upright character. 

Submitted by:

Arlene Goodwin

Auburn, Indiana

Agoodwin@ctlnet.com