When James Cowley was born in October 1759, in Mere, Wiltshire, England, United Kingdom, his father, Thomas Cowley II, was 27 and his mother, Susannah Forward, was 36. He married Sarah Maidment on 21 April 1793, in Mere, Wiltshire, England, United Kingdom. They were the parents of at least 1 son and 2 daughters. He died about 1829, at the age of 71.
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The Act of Union was a legislative agreement which united England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland under the name of the United Kingdom on January 1, 1801.
The British West Africa Squadron was formed in 1808 to suppress illegal slave trading on the African coastline. The British West Africa Squadron had freed approximately 150,000 people by 1865.
The defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo marks the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon defeated and exiled to St. Helena.
English: habitational name from any of various places called Cowley. One in Gloucestershire is named with Old English cū ‘cow’ + lēah ‘woodland clearing’; two in Derbyshire have Old English col ‘(char)coal’ as the first element; and one near London is from Old English cofa ‘shelter, bay’ (see Cove ) or the personal name Cofa. The largest group, however, with examples in Buckinghamshire, Devon, Oxfordshire, and Staffordshire, were apparently named as ‘the wood or clearing of Cufa’; however, in view of the number of places called with this element, it is possible that it conceals a topographic term as well as a personal name.
Irish: shortened form of Macaulay (see McCauley ).
Manx: shortened form of Gaelic Mac Amhlaoibh ‘son of Amhlaoibh’ (a Gaelicized form of Old Norse Óláfr). For an alternative Manx form of the same patronymic see Callow .
Dictionary of American Family Names © Patrick Hanks 2003, 2006.
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