Lydia Williams

Lydia Williams

Confirmed

1835–1876

Died

in 1876

Married

James Daniel Bowles

Children

Emily Bowles

Sources

7

Images

11

Research status

Research status: CONFIRMED as the mother of William Anderson Bowles Confirmed. Earl’s 3rd-great-grandmother. The Owsley County birth register for 1858, read from the image, gives the maiden name of mother as Lydia Williams on the row of Wm. A. Bowles, born 9 April S160. Two more records read from their images agree: the 1856 register marries Lydia Williams to James Bowles in the same county S143, and the 1860 census has William, 2, in her house S171; her daughter Lucinda’s 1920 Arizona death certificate also gives the mother’s maiden name as Williams S158. Open points: her day of birth and her death rest on the family tree and Find a Grave S22; no death record has been read; the three records of her age disagree. Her own parents are graded separately, rest on one census sheet, and are Probable. Know more? Use “Add to this record”.

Life in the order the records give it

Birth1835

Born in Tennessee; the family tree’s day is 30 May 1835. Her age of 15 on the 1850 sheet requires a birth between 2 June 1834 and 1 June 1835, which contains that day without proving it S173. Her birthplace is Tennessee at fifteen S173, on the 1856 register S143 and on the 1860 sheet S171. Two of her children’s death certificates give Virginia S158 and Kentucky instead; both were written sixty and eighty years later by informants a generation on.

Census1860

In June 1860 she was at Travellers Rest, Owsley County, aged 27, unable to read or write, with Emily, 4, and William, 2 S171; in June 1870 she was 35, with eight children S157. She and James were both 20 in 1856, she was two years the elder in 1860 and four years the younger in 1870; the three records are not reconciled.

Death1876

Died in 1876 by the family tree and Find a Grave S22; no death record has been read.

Record2026

History of this card. 13 Oct 2026

card written from the records already cited on the Bowles, Williams and Brock line page, where this ancestor had stood as a chain entry only; no new record was read and no grade was changed. 13 Oct 2026 — status raised from Probable to Confirmed as the mother of William Anderson Bowles, re-derived from the records already on the card (S160, with S143, S171 and S158); no new record was read. Her documents were attached to the card the same day.

Family parents, marriages, children, siblings

Marriage1856

Wife of James Daniel Bowles. They married in March 1856 in Owsley County, Kentucky; the register gives her as Lydia Williams, 20, single, born Hawkins County, Tennessee S143.

Children1870

Mother of Emily Bowles, William Anderson Bowles and Lucinda Bowles, and of James D., Nancy, Sarah, Joanna and Martha E. of the 1870 household S157.

Open questions what is probable, weak or missing — confirm or correct it

Probable

Probable daughter of Moses Williams and Nancy Williams: she is Lydia, 15, born Tennessee, in their Owsley County household on 4 September 1850, and no second Lydia Williams is on the page S173. One census sheet, and it states no relationship.

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Portraits (10)

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Documents (1)

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Lydia Williams Bowles (Earl's 3rd great-grandmother)

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In the record Generation 6 — Earl's 3rd-great-grandparents

1. S22FindAGrave memorial 63936320, William Anderson Bowles (1858–1936), Potosi Cemetery — findagrave.com/memorial/63936320.
2. S143Owsley County, Kentucky marriage register, March 1856 — James Bowles and Lydia Williams. Ancestry collection 1117 (Kentucky, U.S., Marriage Records, 1852–1914), record 47500, image KYVR_994052-0124. Read from the image at full resolution — 3536 × 3264 px, 49/49 DeepZoom tiles, 21 September 2026. The ruled register carries GROOM and BRIDE halves with the printed headings Date of Marriage · Name · Residence · Age · Condition · Place of Birth. Their line reads: March 1856 · James Bowles, residence Owsley Co., Ky., age 20, Single, born Estill County, Kentucky — and Lydia Williams, residence Owsley Co., Ky., age 20, Single, born Hawkins County, Tennessee. A primary record behind this couple, where the FindAGrave parent links [S22] are derivative. A county clerk puts the two of them on one line in the same county whose birth register settled their son William Anderson Bowles. Lydia’s birthplace has a source: the bride column gives Hawkins County, Tennessee, the place the tree carried uncited. Her age 20 at a March 1856 marriage puts her birth between about March 1835 and March 1836, which contains the tree's 30 May 1835 without proving it. Both are recorded Single — a first marriage for each — and both were already resident in Owsley County. ⚠ The day is clipped at the gutter: the image carries March 1856, and the 6 March on the card is Ancestry's index of this register, not a date read off the page. ⚠ The groom's age contradicts the birth year this site carries. Age 20 in March 1856 puts this James Bowles's birth about 1835–1836, against the 1830–31 the site gives James Daniel Bowles from three age columns (S155, S156, S157). The register gives no middle name; it reads simply James Bowles. Either the 1830–31 is wrong or this is a different man. Recorded, not resolved — the couple stays Probable. ⚠ Estill County, Kentucky as his birthplace is on this register alone, and a Kentucky register of this period carries no parentage columns, so it says nothing about the generation above.
3. S1571870 U.S. Federal Census — James Bowles household, Travellers Rest Precinct, Owsley County, Kentucky. Ancestry collection 7163, record 22213199. Enumerated 30 June 1870 by A. J. Herd, Ass't Marshal; post office Travellers Rest, page No. 34, dwelling 224 / family 220, lines 1–10. Read from the image at full resolution, 22 September 2026. Bowles, James, 39, M, W, Farmer, personal estate $150 and the real-estate column empty, born Kentucky; Lydia, 35, keeping house, born TENNESSEE; then Emily 13, William 12 (farm labour), James D 10, Nancy 8, Sarah 6, Joanna 5, Martha E 2, and Lucinda, 4/12, born within the year — month FEB. 🔑 The whole family stands in one frame — the couple the 1856 Owsley register created S143, with eight children, fourteen years on. 🔑 Lydia's Tennessee birth is now in a second clerk's hand, corroborating the Hawkins County, Tennessee of the marriage register. 🔑 William, 12, is William Anderson Bowles to the month — a boy born 9 April 1858 is exactly 12 on the 1 June 1870 census day S160. 🔑 Lucinda at four months is the link to Arizona. The "born within the year" column gives Feb, and her own 1920 death certificate, filed in Phoenix by her husband, gives 27 February 1870 S158. 🔑 He owned no land in 1870. The real-estate column is empty — a fact an index cannot show, and a plain one beside his father's $1,200 twenty years earlier S155. ⚠ Its age column is the third to exclude 9 July 1831. Age 39 on 1 June 1870 requires a birth between 2 June 1830 and 1 June 1831. With 1850 (19) and 1863 (32), three independent enumerations agree with each other and disagree with the tree, whose date carries no primary citation. The tree and this site give 1830–31; none of the three states a day. ⚠ Emily, William and James D are all marked cannot read, cannot write; only James D attended school within the year. ⚠ No other Bowles household appears on the page. 🔑 The empty real-estate column is a loss, not a constant. The 1860 Travellers Rest sheet [S171] gives James Bowls $500 in real estate; here the column is empty and personal estate has fallen from $200 to $150. He held land in 1860 and held none in 1870, and that is a fact about the decade, not a transcription constant. S157's transcription otherwise holds in every particular. ⚠ The page gives no reason for the loss.
4. S158Arizona Certificate of Death, 1920 — LUCINDA CARPENTER, daughter of James Daniel Bowles, Phoenix, Maricopa County. Ancestry collection 60420, record 600216827. Arizona State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, County Registered No. 9718, Local Registrar's No. 2439. Read from the image at full resolution, 22 September 2026. Lucinda Carpenter, F, White, married; date of birth Feb 27 1870, age 50, occupation Housewife, birthplace Kentucky; NAME OF FATHER: James Bowles; MAIDEN NAME OF MOTHER: Williams; informant R. N. Carpenter; died 28 September 1920, 3:30 p.m., of shock following operation at the Deaconess Hospital, attended from 12 August; buried Greenwood, 30 September 1920; usual residence California, about two years in Arizona. 🔴 THIS IS NOT JAMES DANIEL BOWLES'S DEATH RECORD, AND ANCESTRY'S INDEX MAKES IT LOOK LIKE ONE. The index surfaces the record under Name: James Bowles. On the image he appears in one box only — Name of Father. It must never be cited as his death record; he died in 1889 in Texas. 🔴 A second index error on the same card: "Spouse: Williams Bowles" is not a person. Williams is the maiden-name-of-mother box, a surname with no given name, read by the indexer as a man. 🔑 What the certificate does settle is a daughter, fully. 27 February 1870, born Kentucky locks to the month against Lucinda, 4/12, born within the year — Feb on line 10 of the 1870 Owsley schedule S157. 🔑 And it corroborates Lydia's maiden surname from another state entirely — Arizona, fifty years and two thousand miles from Owsley County, from a family informant. Williams now rests on three independent documents: the 1856 marriage register S143, the 1858 birth register S160 and this. ⚠ WHAT IS REJECTED HERE, AND WHY. The certificate gives Virginia for both of her parents' birthplaces. Both are rejected. James was born in Estill County, Kentucky on his own marriage register S143 and Kentucky on three schedules; Lydia was born in Tennessee on two. The informant was a son-in-law reporting in 1920 on a father-in-law thirty years dead. The likely source of the slip is recoverable and is worth stating: James's OWN parents, Wm A. and Lucy Bowles, WERE born in Virginia S155 — the informant was one generation out, not simply wrong. A death certificate is primary for the death and hearsay for the parents. 🔑 Both parents' Virginia birthplaces were checked against the other records. Lydia's is wrong too. Three contemporaneous records give her Tennessee — the 1850 Owsley schedule while she was living at home [S173], the 1856 bride's column [S143], and the 1860 Travellers Rest sheet [S171] — and her son's 1936 Texas certificate gives a third answer, Kentucky. Two informants, two different wrong answers, sixty and eighty years on. Tennessee stands; the pattern is the finding. The Virginia is weak sideways corroboration of the Virginia-born generation in [S155] and worthless for either James's or Lydia's own birthplace.
5. S160Owsley County, Kentucky BIRTH REGISTER, returns for 1858 — Wm. A. Bowles, born 9 April 1858, with both parents named on the row. Ancestry collection 1213 (Kentucky, U.S., Birth Records, 1847–1911), record 150077533, image KYVR_994052-0056; the leaf is tabbed BIRTH and flagged Faded Page. Read from the image at full resolution — 3736 × 3264 px, 56/56 DeepZoom tiles, 22 September 2026. The register runs as one table across the opening. Row 5: Date of Birth April 9th (the year 1858 stands at the head of the column and is carried down by ditto); Name of Child Wm. A. Bowles; Male; Alive; Place of Birth Owsley Co., Ky; Name of Father: Jas. Bowles; Maiden name of Mother: Lydia Williams; White; Residence of Parents Owsley Co., Ky. 🔑 9 APRIL 1858 RESTS ON A COUNTY REGISTER, NOT ON FIND A GRAVE. The date is the one Find a Grave gives; here it is written by a county clerk, at the time, in a statutory register, where Find a Grave offers only parent links S22. Weigh primary over derivative: this outranks S22 and is cited ahead of it. 🔑 It is also the FIRST DOCUMENTARY STATEMENT OF THE PARENT–CHILD LINK IN WORDS. Elsewhere James Daniel Bowles and Lydia Williams are tied to William Anderson Bowles by Find a Grave and by inference from the 1870 household S157 — a son William, 12, exactly the right age. This register states it outright, at the birth, naming the father and the mother's maiden name on the child's own line. 🔑 A third independent document for the maiden surname Williams, and the second written in Kentucky at the time S143. Note the column heading: it is "Maiden name of Mother", not spouse — Ancestry's index renders it as Spouse: Lydia Williams, the same fact with worse provenance. 🔑 Ancestry's index carries NO DATE AT ALL. The date exists only on the image. ⚠ Only one Bowles appears anywhere in the father column of this page — it is otherwise Davis, Abner, Warner, Young, Prewit, Wells, McGuire, Kincaid, Beatty, Williams, Boothe, Bryant, Sizemore, Creech and others — so there is no second candidate on the leaf. ⚠ The 1856 date on his Texas death certificate is the outlier; it is outvoted by a birth register, the 1900 Texas census S140 and the 1870 Kentucky census S157.
6. S1711860 U.S. Federal Census — James Bowls household, post office Travellers Rest, County of Owsley, State of Kentucky. Ancestry collection 7667, record 39791435, image 4231202_00321. SCHEDULE 1.—Free Inhabitants, enumerated on the 27th day of June 1860 by J. E. Gibson, Ass't Marshal; page 25, stamped 321, dwelling and family 165/165, lines 24–27. Read from the image at full resolution — 4655 × 6478 px, 22 September 2026. James Bowls, 25, real estate $500, occupation column blank; Lydia, 27, born Tenn, cannot read or write; Emily, 4; William, 2. The sheet names him plain James, and the search for his farm follows that name. He is James, never Daniel; no Daniel G. Bowls is anywhere on the page; and because he holds $500 in real estate an agricultural-schedule entry is likely. The farm to pursue on the 1860 agricultural schedule is "James M. Bowls"; that schedule has not been read. William Anderson Bowles at 2 — his earliest census appearance, exactly as the Owsley County birth register's 9 April 1858 predicts [S160], and an independent corroboration of it. Lydia born Tenn, matching Hawkins County on the 1856 bride's column [S143]. James Bowles held land in 1860 and had none in 1870. Read against the 1870 sheet [S157], where the real-estate column is empty and personal estate falls $200 to $150, the empty 1870 column is a LOSS, not a constant. Emily, 4, is the eldest child on the sheet. Lydia could not read or write (col. 13). James's occupation column is blank where every other head on the page reads Farmer — an enumerator's omission, not a statement that he had no trade. It unsettles the couple's relative ages. Both 20 in 1856 [S143]; here Lydia 27 to James 25, which no other record supports; James 39 to Lydia 35 in 1870 [S157]. Three records, three answers — recorded, not resolved.
7. S1731850 U.S. Federal Census — Moses Williams household, County of Owsley, State of Kentucky. Ancestry collection 8054, record 17453010, image 4192506_00389. SCHEDULE I.—Free Inhabitants, enumerated on the 4th day of Sept 1850 by Luther Brawner, Ass't Marshal; dwelling and family 281/281, lines 18–25. Read from the image at full resolution, 22 September 2026. Moses Williams, 50, Farmer, real estate $750, born TENNESSEE, cannot read or write; Nancy Williams, 48, born Tennessee, cannot read or write; Nathan 21, Laborer; a son of 18 whose given name has faded off the page; Lydia, 15, born TENNESSEE; George 10; Nancy 8, born Tennessee; Abraham, 5, born KENTUCKY. Lydia's probable parents, each with a card, graded Probable. This sheet puts her, at fifteen, in the household of Moses and Nancy Williams in the county she marries in six years later [S143], and there is no second Lydia Williams on the page. The hedge is stated plainly: an 1850 schedule states no relationship whatever. Ancestry's own word is inferred. This is the same evidentiary shape as James and Elizabeth Brock [S167] [S169] and it is weaker — that is a two-census chain, this is one sheet. It is graded Probable, not Confirmed, on his card and in the family tree. Age 15 contains the tree's 30 May 1835 by two days. Reference day 1 June 1850; 15 requires a birth between 2 June 1834 and 1 June 1835. The tightest corroboration the date has; the day itself is still unattested by any document. The family left Tennessee between c.1842 and c.1845 — Nancy, 8, born Tennessee; Abraham, 5, born Kentucky. Lydia was a child of about seven to ten when they moved. Lydia's birthplace is Tennessee, in her own household, at fifteen — the first of three contemporaneous records to say so, with the 1856 bride's column [S143] and the 1860 Travellers Rest sheet [S171]. Both parents illiterate (col. 13 ticked). Line 21's given name is unread. Ancestry indexes James, 18; the ink is no longer on the page, and he is recorded here as unread, not as James. The $750 leads with a 7 in this hand; $450 cannot be wholly excluded. What would settle the parentage is the 1840 schedule with the same household, an Owsley County marriage bond for Lydia in 1856 naming a father's consent, or a probate for Moses Williams. None has been pulled.