found: NUCMC data from Middlesex County Hist. Soc. for Stow family collection, 1773-1837 and undated(Joshua Stow was born on Apr. 22, 1762 to a farmer and part owner of a mill and throughout his youth he helped his father with the farm and mill as well as studied a myriad of subjects and became, later in his youth, a schoolteacher in the winter months. Stow had one older brother (Elisha) and six younger siblings (Jemima, Lydia, Obed, Naomi, Eunice and Silas). As can be seen in his diaries kept from the years 1785 to 1788, one can sense a feeling of restlessness that may have influenced his decision to join a group surveying land in western New York. Later this group took him to Ohio, where he founded a town appropriately called Stow. While he never lived there, he did travel back and forth a rumored thirteen times, spent a significant amount of money establishing the town and some of his relatives did settle there. Joshua Stow married Ruth Coe eleven years before he founded Stow, Ohio in 1785 and the two of them had three children, Julia, Lauren, and Albert Gallatin. While in Middlefield, Joshua served as Constable of Middlefield from 1789 to 1792, as collector of state and county taxes (1790-1814, 1814-1819 respectively), postmaster (1815-1818, 1821-1841) as well as bought and operated a sawmill at the Falls of West River. Perhaps what Joshua Stow is most well known for was his unwavering dedication to the cause of religious freedom. Stow was a member of the Congregational Church in Middlefield as well as a member of the Ethosian Society since 1789 (mainly a debating club made up of young intellectuals). As a member and clerk of the Congregational Church he encouraged ministers of other denominations to preach there and was the leader of the Toleration Party. As the leader of this party, Stow was elected as a delegate to the State Constitutional Convention in 1818 where his purpose was to rid the county of state support for churches and make an explicit statement of religious freedom. Stow was ultimately successful and a revised Constitution was set into place on Sept. 15, 1818. The Federalists had staunchly opposed this revision of the Constitution and launched a smear campaign on Joshua Stow. The lawsuit that was the result of this smear campaign, Joshua Stow vs. Sherman Converse in 1820, had a lasting effect on the Stow family. Six months after the revised Constitution was adopted, the Connecticut Constitution newspaper published an article accusing Joshua Stow of "spreading (anti-Christian) infidelity" as well as claiming that Stow had created an Infidel Club in which he denied the true God and the Being of a God. Sherman Converse was the publisher of this newspaper as well as the author of the offensive article. The two lengthy trials that were a result of Stow suing Converse and his newspaper, dragged Stow and his family through the mud but ultimately the jury decided in the favor of Stow. Unfortunately for Stow, this was not to be the last scandal that his family was forced to endure in the early 1820s. In 1817, Stow had been appointed to a directorship of the Bank of the United States Middletown Branch. One of his fellow directors, Arthur W. Magill, a Jeffersonian, had been participating in some reckless financial activity and illegal lending processes. Because the bank president, Enoch Parsons was a firm Federalist, he manipulated this opportunity to serve his political agenda and in 1820 he brought a lawsuit against Magill and the other Jeffersonian directors, Nathan Starr, Jr., Elisha Coe, and Joshua Stow. Stow managed to escape from this trial relatively unscathed except for mild political harassment. Magill, Starr and the friends to which Magill was illegally lending money were heavily fined and Starr's properties were seized. For the next twenty-two years Joshua Stow and his family lived in relative peace until his death at the age of 80 in 1842)
found: English Wikipedia website, viewed May 4, 2015(Joshua Stow (April 22, 1762--October 10, 1842) was the founder of Stow, Ohio. His family originated from England in the 17th century, and included the first minister in Middletown, Conn., a Congregationalist. He married Ruth Coe in 1786; they had at least three children)
