There is a 2 volume book set, Genealogy of the Cowles Families in America, written about the Cowles family. I own a copy of the books. According to the books the earliest known ancestor on this line was John Cowles who was from Gloucestershire, England. He came to the US in 1634 and first settled in Farmington, CT. He moved to Hartford, CT in 1656. He then moved to Hadley, MA/Hatfield, MA in the summer of 1664. He was one of the founding members of the town of Hatfield, MA. It does seem odd though that he would have moved to Massachusetts, since it seems like all of his children stayed in Connecticut. John Cowles arrived in the US around the same time as many other early Connecticut families. More about the Hart, Porter, and Stanley lines in a future blog post.
According to some other sources John Cowles’ name was really John Cole and he changed it to Cowles when another John Cole also moved to Farmington. That story says that the name Cowles didn’t exist prior to that time and that everyone with the surname Cowles in the US is descended from him. However the Genealogy of the Cowles Family book disputes that theory. The author of the book found that there were people with the surname Cowles in England and that not all the Cowles families in the US were descended from this John Cowles. So it seems likely that he did not change his name.
There is a famous Cowles family descendant, Gideon Welles, Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy. Gideon was my husband’s 4th cousin 5 times removed (my kids’ 4th cousin 6 times removed). Being as my younger daughter is a big fan of Lincoln’s this was a pretty cool find. Gideon was descended from Timothy Cowles. My husband is descended from Samuel Cowles. Timothy and Samuel were brothers. Their parents were Samuel Cowles and Abigail Stanley.
Here’s some info about Gideon from the FindAGrave Website, https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=5993736. “Born in Glastonbury, Connecticut, to an old family of the state, he completed studies at Norwich Academy in Vermont and turned to journalism and politics. By 1826 he had become part owner and editor of the “Hartford Times”. That same year he was elected to his state’s legislature, serving there till 1835. A Jeffersonian in his emphasis on individual freedoms and states’ rights, he became an early supporter of Andrew Jackson and then was a personal adviser to President Jackson. Although he failed in his first tries at national office, he built up a reputation among a wide circle of influential Americans through his writings and travels. In 1856 he left the Democratic Party to help organize the new Republican Party, all the while promoting a more moderate view as the nation moved toward confrontation. After Abraham Lincoln was elected United States President in 1860, he knew his cabinet had to include at least one New England Republican, so Welles was appointed Secretary of the Navy, and if he had no experience as a naval man, his able and energetic assistant, Gustavus V. Fox, was a navy man. Together they revitalized a Navy Department. He was known not to get along all that well with some of his fellow cabinet officers such as Secretary of War Edward M. Stanton and Secretary of State William Seward, and he would sometimes make policy beyond his naval concerns; as early as July 1861, he was ordering Union naval officers to protect runaway slaves and by that September he was allowing former slaves to enlist in the Navy. The same moderation that led him to support President Lincoln’s announced plans for reconstruction led him to support President Andrew Johnson even through the impeachment crisis and in opposition to many of his former Republican colleagues. He stayed through President Johnson’s administration, working for the modernization of the Navy. After retirement, he continued speaking out on public issues and wrote articles and a book about the Lincoln administration. His most lasting contribution to historians is the 3 volume “Diary of Gideon Welles”. The diary is considered by many historians to be an opinionated, brilliant insider’s account and analysis of events and personalities of the war years, but was edited by him to reflect favorably on himself.” Not too happy that he liked Andrew Jackson because my kids definitely consider him to have been one of the worst US Presidents for the way he treated Native Americans with the Trail of Tears.
The Cowles family tree can be found here https://myfamgen.com/cowles-family/.