William Bell Lowe

He went to New York City and was in the wholesale business there to the start of war in 1861, when he returned to Georgia. He was elected 2nd Lieutenant of Company F of the Infantry Battalion, Cobb's Legion on 16 September 1861 and was promoted to First Lieutenant on 22 June 1862.

He was slightly wounded in the leg in action at Crampton's Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862 and captured there.

He was treated at the US 6th Army Corps field hospital in Burkittsville, MD then sent to Aikens' Landing, VA for exchange. He resigned his commission for disability due to "severe ulceration of the glands of the neck" on 24 February 1863, and was discharged on 12 March.

He was afterward with the Atlanta & West Point Railroad in Atlanta to the end of the war.

After the war he was in the clothing business in Atlanta as W.B. Lowe & Company and in 1870 was a founder of the Chattahoochee Brick Company there. He was also in the lumber business and officer of several railroads. He was noted in particular for using unpaid convict labor in his businesses, and hiring such men out to other companies at a profit. He was a retired merchant in Atlanta in 1880 but gave his occupation as merchant in Atlanta in an 1890 US passport application, and was a merchant & capitalist with residence at 513 Peachtree Street in Atlanta at the time of his death in 1900.

His service from his Compiled Service Records,1 online from fold3. Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1880, and a bio sketch in White's The National Cyclopedia of American Biography (Vol. VII, 1897). His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Rebecca F. Douglass (1844-1918) in January 1868 and they had 3 children; their first died in infancy. Daughter Rebecca Douglas "Rebe" Lowe (1869-1935) was married to James Warren English (1867-1914), William's business partner in the brick works and other ventures.

See more about Lowe and a c. 1899 project he envisioned to build a 10-story apartment building next door to his residence in Atlanta, from Lisa Land Cooper.

07/10/1839; Greenville, GA

04/04/1900; Atlanta, GA; burial in Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta, GA