The Pipe-Smoking Dragon

“If Whistler’s Mother had smoked a small clay pipe which she always carried in her reticule or in the deep side pocket of her black silk dress, she would have been very much like Grandmother Lowry.” “Grandmother Lowry” was Eliza Ann (Sweet) Lowry as described by her granddaughter Mary Elizabeth (Lowry) Johansen. Eliza was one of twelve children of Nathaniel and Elizabeth (Maddox) Sweet (9 Sep 2015 blog) and she was my great great grandmother.

Eliza was a real Clark County, Illinois, character. Mary Johansen continued her description as “somewhat of a spoiled old darling who had all the endearing softness of a rip-snorting dragon, a tiny one weighing less than a hundred pounds and standing only for feet ten inches high…” The Marshall Herald described her as a “genuine pioneer.”

Eliza Ann (Sweet) Lowry on right, daughter Elizabeth

J. (Lowry) Wright at left. At the back may be her
granddaughter Mary Elizabeth Wright (c1915).

And a pioneer she certainly was. Born in Kentucky or Ohio (even Eliza seemed unsure) on 14 Jul 1822, she came to Illinois with her parents and siblings in 1836. In Danville on 28 Feb 1839 she married Jackson Lowry and the two had twelve children, several dying young. In Clark County the family lived in Auburn Township near the Tapscotts, Sweets, and Wrights. There, according to another granddaughter, Hattie (Lowry) Chick, “they lived in one room for a while then built two more rooms.… She and the girls farmed and raised sheep and spun yarn to make their own clothes.” And once Eliza encountered “A big bear [that] came out of the woods and took a blackberry pie which was cooling on the window sill.”

Jackson, who briefly fought with the Union Army, died young, in 1871 at age 51, leaving his feisty widow to fend for herself. She fended well, living for a while in Martinsville, and eventually moving to Marshall to live with her unmarried daughter, Rachel, whose life she commandeered. According to Mary Johansen “Rachel developed that thin, harried look that women sometimes wear when their lives are devoted to waiting on elderly female dragons.” When Eliza badgered her daughter to trade her house in Marshall for small farm, the two went to live near Hog Thief Church. The move turned out to be Rachel’s liberation, allowing her to meet the next door farmer, Albert Huston, and marry him. At age 44, she was an “old maid” no longer.

After living with Rachel and her husband for several years, a situation calling for disaster, Eliza eventually moved in with her son and daughter-in-law Lewis and Mahala (Sweet) Lowry in Martinsville Township. There she had a log cabin in the family’s backyard, where she would roast corn and potatoes in the fireplace with her grandkids and where she would go to smoke her pipe, a lifelong friend. The 21 Jul 1915 edition of the Marshall Herald described her 93rd birthday.

Last Wednesday [14 July] was the 93rd birthday of Mrs. Eliza Lowery of Martinsville Township. Aunt Eliza as she is known to the people of the community was born in Ohio, July 14, 1822, and came to Clark County in 1836---a genuine pioneer. She was married to Jackson Lowery and reared a family of nine children, five daughters and four sons. Two sons and one daughter are living. They are Lewis Lowry of Martinsville Township, Frank Lowry of Oklahoma, and Mrs. Elizabeth Wright of Anderson Township. Mrs. Lowry's mental condition is good and also her hearing and sight. She smokes her pipe and has done so for 80 years. She makes her home with her son Lewis where a dinner was given Wednesday in her honor. There was quite a number of her old acquaintances present including Howard Norman, W.F. Romines and wife, Thomas Kinderdine and wife, Robert Hurst and wife, Austin Sweet and wife, Morgan Sweet and wife, Charles Sweet and wife, Robert Sweet and wife, Bert Mitchell and wife, Mrs. W.H. Cunningham, Doc Cunningham, John A. Sweet, Mrs. Jane Sweet and daughter, Mrs. Belle Sweet, Mrs. J. Reasor and Mrs. Elizabeth Wright and her daughter, Mary. Old time songs were sung, violin music was furnished by Howard Norman and there was much conversation relating to early times in this county, of deer hunting, log rolling, etc. And old time love songs were sung by W.F. Romines.

Eliza died three years later, on Apr 1918 at the advanced age of 95. She is buried alongside her husband in Auburn Cemetery, a fire-breathing dragon no more. But one must acknowledge that some “dragonality” was needed to bear twelve children, raise a family, and survive as a widow in the backwoods.

As a final comment, the death year and probably the birth year are incorrect on Eliza’s grave marker, and the number of children differs greatly between sources. Twelve is the number given by Eliza.

All genealogical data reported in these blogs are from primary and/or reputable secondary sources, or reliable transcriptions thereof, and never from unsourced online trees. Contact the author to request sources, which have been omitted here to improve readability.