Ike Low and Melissa Travis (122 and 123)

Ike Low and Melissa Travis

(4 Stars) The youngest child of Isaac Hickman Low and Mary Ann Parker was Isaac (Ike) Low.  The family traditions that I learned from my grandfather, Leslie Lowe, stated that Ike was an orphan, and that he never talked about his family.  Young Ike must have been affected by his father’s death while he was a young boy, and once Mary Ann died, Elmore Harper (her second husband) separated the children by farming them out to various cousins to raise.

Young Ike was raised by his father’s nephew, Isaac Wright Low, and it is assumed that he often felt isolated or different from the rest of the Low family.  There are several reasons for this deduction.   First, Ike never talked about his family or relatives.  All he would say was that he was an orphan.  This made researching his early life very difficult since I didn’t know where to look.  Sabine county historians, as well as various family traditions state that Ike was known for his stinginess, or as Blanche Toole said, “He was very tight with everything.”

Ike was born on December 11, 1862, and he married Melissa Cordelia Travis, the daughter of Cannon Travis and Saphronia White, on January 10, 1882.  Ike and Melissa had eleven children that I am aware of.  They are:

            1.  Henry  born in 1883

            2.  Tom  born on March 27, 1884

            3.  Mattie  born in 1886

            4.  Dan born in 1890

            5.  Cannon born in 1892

            6.  Jim born in 1894

            7.  Emma born in 1896

            8.  George born in 1889

            9.  Winnie born in 1898

            10.  Alvin born in 1902

            11.  Harvey born in 1903

L to R:  George Lowe, Unknown, Tom Lowe

Jack Lowe, a son of Tom Lowe, remembers that “Ike had a log house.  It was a real good house and it had a dogpen [run], a hall down the middle, and he had a kitchen off making an L on one end of it.”  Jack went on to say that it was a large house with both a front and back porch.  Ike and Melissa’s home, outside Hemphill, Texas, was on a steep hill that went down to a little stream called Brushy.  Jack Lowe remembers that Ike did not have a well, and that he would load a wagon with seven or eight barrels that he would take down to the creek to fill with water.  Ike would pour the water into a cistern until it was filled.

 

Sabine county in the 1880s was still included in the Big Thicket territory.  The Big Thicket spanned several East Texas counties and it is said that if a person wanders into the Thicket, out of sight of the road, he may be lost indefinitely.  Sabine county remained a “frontier” county until well into the twentieth century.  That is, people often settled disputes independently of the law.

All food was grown on local farms and families were self-supporting.  Much of the land on which the Low family lived came to be called “Scrappin’ Valley.”  The families would often fight among themselves and others.  With each generation, the land would be divided among the children and their families.  Intermarriages were not uncommon and a gunfight could easily be caused by a dispute over hogs.  In a sense, the Low family did not change over the years.  As with the original clan, they still feuded among themselves, as well as with other clans.

One of the major incidents in Ike and Melissa’s lives occurred shortly after they were married.  Melissa’s family, the Travis’, was a very large family, and one of Melissa’s sisters, Saphronia, married Fed Conner.  Fed was one of six  sons of Willis Conner.  The other sons were Bill, Alfred, charles, Leander, and John.  It seems that on December 5, 1883, Eli Low, a cousin of Ike’s, and friend, Kit Smith, were clearing some land in what was known as Holly Bottom.  Holly Bottom was not far from Brushy—where Ike and Melissa lived.  According to family tradition, a big rainstorm hit and Eli and Kit decided to go hog hunting.

  The Conner family operated a small farm about six miles east of Hemphill, and they had several hundred head of hogs that were allowed to run free in the unfenced forest.  This was at a time when many people were at oddd over whether to allow ranchers to “freerange” their cattle and hogs.  Many farmers were against the freerange animals, as they would get into gardens and cause all sorts of trouble.  The situation in Sabine county had slowly escalated to the point were townspeople were carrying guns and threatening each other.

Family tradition states that the Conners rode up on Eli and Kit, shooting them both, and starting the Low/Conner feud.  Eli and Kit’s bodies were found covered by a cloth.  The Conners were charged and convicted of the murders and were placed in  jail in Hemphill while awaiting transfer to a state penitentiary. 

  In January of 1886, the jail was broken into and the Conners escaped.  The people that helped them escape went to jail, but the Conners fled into the woods and became outlaws, professing their innocence to all who would listen. 

The Conners, by fleeing into the woods, caused suffering in many families in Sabine county.  Almost every family was related in some way to every other family and this was a very tragic affair to all of them.  Blanche Toole stated that althought Melissa’s sister ws married to Fed, “he [Ike] was against them.”  Blanche went on to state that eventually everyone in the “whole oounty got to hunting them.”  Jack Lowe stated that he remembered his grandfather, Ike, telling him about the feud, and that Ike had, despite his feelings towards the Conners, “fed them some” while they were running from the law.  Even the Texas Rangers got involved, and one of them, J.H. Moore, was killed.  Eventually all the Conners were killed, or ran away, and the feud ended.  Blanche stated that, “ in the books, little Ike doesn’t get too much credit for being very good to Saphronia Pauline Conner,” who was the widow of Fed Conner and Melissa’s sister.  They all had a hard time getting by after the feud ended.

When Melissa had a baby, her mother, Saphronia White-Travis, would come and stay with them to help look after the house and the children.  Ms. Toole told me a story that involved a Mr. John Paul Hyden.  John used to live down from Ike and Melissa and had to pass their house to get to the school. Well, Saphronia, now an elderly lady, smoked a pipe and Ike wouldn’t buy her any tobacco.  When she ran out of tobacco, she stopped John and told him that if would buy her some tobacco, he could “marry any of her daughters he wanted.”  John was a very young boy, and remembered being scared to death of her.

On August 1, 1908, Melissa died and was buried in the Hemphill Cemetery.  Ike later married a Ms. Emma Clark.  Ike’s children seemed to be satisfied with his marriage to Emma.  Jack Lowe stated that his father, Tom owe, felt that Ike “needed somebody to take care of him.”  Ike and Emma had three children:

            1.  Wiley

            2.  Jack (Judge)

            3.  Winnie

  Ike died on August 12, 1923, and it is believed that Emma moved back to Louisiana to be with her family.

Ike Low

Facts and Trivia on the Lowe Family

According to one family tradition, George, a son of Ike and Melissa changed the spelling of the name from Low to Lowe, because he was receiving another George Low’s mail and couldn’t get the Post Office to ever straighten out the problem.  He changed the spelling and it has been spelled Lowe by every generation since.  Many of the other relatives also began spelling the name with an e about this time as well.

Another tradition states that another son of Ike’s,Dan Lowe, was engaged to marry a Smith girl, and that the two attended church together.  Apparently she got mad at him one day during a service and began beating on the poor fella, chasing him out of the church in front of everybody.  From that day on the land the Lowe’s lived on became known as “Scrappin’ Valley.”  As to the couple, they did get married, but the marriage didn’t last too long and they were soon divorced.  I can’t imagine why!