The earlier family history of my Cowie
ancestors below is somewhat speculative. My great-grandmother
Barbara's birth, and that of most of her siblings,
is clearly recorded in the registers of the Catholic
Apostolic Church in Westminster, where they were
baptised by Edward Irving, the Church's founder,
who had left his ministry at the Church of Scotland's
London church after developing a new theological
vision (I think). The oldest children were baptised
in that Church of Scotland parish. However, Barbara
had an older brother or half-brother Alexander,
whose wife was the sister to the man who eventually
married Barbara; and there is another David Cowie
(the same name as Barbara's father), also a shoemaker
in London, who might have been another brother or
half-brother. While I can find a marriage that might
be that of Barbara's parents, it is clearly too
late to be that of Alexander's parents; but there
is no trace of an earlier marriage or of Alexander's
birth.
David Cowie
b. ?1789, ?Fife
d. 1846, London
?shoemaker
Sarah Cowie