Paul and Beda Franks Rowe

-Paul Rowe was born in Amity on Sept. 5, 1898 and died in June 2, 1983.
-Beda Ellen Franks was born in Pike City, Pike Co., Ark. on June 27, 1899 and died in February 9, 1983.
-Paul married Beda Ellen Franks on February 10, 1916.
-Paul and Beda Rowe are buried in Jones Cemetery in Amity.

Paul Holmes Rowe was the son of Martin and Celia Eliza Miller Rowe. Paul and Beda were the parents of Marie Rowe, who married Ernest Echols, who many of us remember as the long-time postmaster of Amity.
The Rowe Family is an important family in the history of America.

The Amity Rowe's are descended from ancestors who emigrated to Arkansas from Alabama and Georgia in the 1870's, but much earlier, the Rowe family was among the very first English settlers of the colony of Connecticut in the New World. A group of Puritans from England, financed by Owen Rowe, a prosperous merchant in London, emigrated from England to Massachusetts in the mid-1600's. But upon arrival in Massachusetts, the Rowe Puritans found that their earlier-arrived Puritan brethren in Massachusetts might have become too lax in their religious observances. And so, the Rowe Puritans got back on their ship and kept moving. They eventually settled on what is now the Connecticut coastline and founded the town of New Haven. Matthew Rowe, (whose relation to Owen Rowe is undetermined), was one of the leaders of the New Haven colony, and later signed one of the earliest versions of a Constitution which governed New Haven. Therefore, not only are the Rowe's some of the first settlers of Connecticut, but are also numbered among the first English settlers of America. Amity's Paul Rowe is a direct descendant of Matthew Rowe.

Beda Franks Rowe was the daughter of James Ervin Franks and Mary Caroline Wisener. Mary Caroline Wisener was the daughter of Jeptha Jackson Wisener and Nancy Margaret Greeson, the progenitors of a very large and extended Wisener family which still populates Amity and Glenwood, among many other cities and towns.

The Rowe family might have helped to settle the New World, but the 1600's wasn't the last time the Rowe family would make national headlines, as you will see in the next post below.