My Genealogy Hound

Rev. Dr. Elisha M. Lowrey, a Missionary Baptist minister, physician and surgeon of LaFayette Township, was born in Franklin County, Ga., in 1828, and is a son of Amos and Eliza Ann (Albrighton) Lowrey, natives of Wilkes County and Franklin County, Ga., respectively. They lived in Franklin County until 1835, and then went to what is now Gordon County, and to Cobb County, where the mother died in 1860. Mr. Lowrey afterward married and moved to DeKalb County, where he died in 1879, aged eight-seven. He was a farmer by occupation, and had belonged to the Methodist Church from childhood. For several years he served as justice of the peace. The grandfather, Elisha Lowrey, was born in South Carolina, of Iris parents, and died in Georgia. He was a soldier in the War of 1812. Prior to the Revolution three brothers, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego Lowrey, came to America from Ireland, and served in the above war. Meshach, the great-grandfather of our subject, settled first in South Carolina, but afterward went to Virginia. He was a minister in the Hardshell Baptist Church many years, and Dr. Lowrey remembers hearing him preach on the one hundred and sixth anniversary of his birth. Dr. Lowrey is the third of a family of seven children, and received his early education in an old log house, with a dirt floor and a fire in the center of the room. When seventeen years old he married Dorcas E., daughter of James and Rachel Stewart, of Cherokee County, Ga., who died in 1854, leaving three children, two of whom are living. In 1856 he was married a second time to Julia Ann, daughter of Moses and Elizabeth Ann Cantrell, becoming his wife. Her parents were born in South Carolina, but her birth-place was in Forsyth County, Ga. She has borne eight children, of whom six are living. After studying medicine four years our subject attended the Macon (Ga.) Botanic School, from which he graduated in 1859, although since 1854 he has practiced medicine with success. When ten years old he became a convert in the Methodist Church, and at the age of sixteen was licensed to preach, which he did for fourteen years. He then united with the Missionary Baptist Church, was immediately ordained, and has since been an earnest worker in that church, preaching with good results in his various places of residence. He preached and practiced medicine in the neighborhood where he was reared until the year 1870, when he came to Crawford County, and until 1880 lived upon forty acres of his present farm, which is situated five miles south of Mountainburg. He then engaged in the drug business at Alma until 1884, after which he lived in Choctaw Nation two years for his health. Since that time he has lived on the old place, which now contains 160 acres. He is widely and favorably known as a minster and physician, and in 1887 established a drug store at Graphic, which is now in the charge of one of his sons. During the war he served six months as surgeon in the Eighth Georgia Battalion. Since 1871 he has belonged to the Masonic fraternity, and is now a member of the Graphic lodge. His wife is a member of the Baptist Church, but was formerly a Methodist.