Despite being Presbyterian by the 1600s, Clan Cowan members were, we argue,

Kohanim/Cohens of Sephardic Jewish ancestry. Below is the Colonial American geneal-

ogy of a Clan Cowan descendant whose DNA scores were Ashkenazi-Levite:

 

John Walker III, b. prob. in Wigton (Scotland), married Anne Houston in about 1734, and d.

1778 on the Clinch River, Southwest Territories. They had nine children:

 

1. Mary, m. Andrew Cowan

 

2. Susanna, m. Patrick Porter

 

3. Jane, m. William Cowan

 

4. Hetty, m. Robert Bell

 

 

4. Genealogies of the Second Wave of Jewish Families, 1350-1700 c.E.

 

5. John, m. A. Long

 

6. Samuel

 

7. Margaret, m. John Judy (= Yehudi/Jew)

 

8. Anne, m. Samuel Cowan

 

9. Martha, m. A. Montgomery

 

Samuel Cowan, d. 1776, m. Anne Walker. Children:

 

1. John

 

2. Robert, m. Susannah Woods

 

3. William

 

4. Samuel

 

5. James, m. Margaret Chrystie Russell

 

6. Nathaniel, m. Sarah Wilson

 

7. Anne

 

8. Elizabeth

 

James Cowan, b. 1761, d. 1801, m. Margaret Chrystie Russell 1795. Graves at 1st Presbyter-

ian Church in Knoxville, Tenn. Children:

 

1. Jean Glasgo, b. 10/02/1796, m. David Campbell, d. 13/10/1882

 

2. Mary, b. 26/10/1799, d. 21/10/1801

 

3. Margaret, b. 22/10/1799, m. John Greenway, d. 13/10/1882

 

4. James “Hervey” Cowan, b. 22/12/1801

 

5. James “Hervey” Cowan, b. 22/12/1801, m. Lucinda Foster Dickinson, d. 25/10/1870.

Graves at Old Gray along with others below. Children:

 

1. Margaret, b. 15/04/1832, m. Charles James McClung, d. 17/11/1883

 

2. Mary, b. 30/12/1833, d. 9/12/1906

 

3. James Dickinson, b. 3/6/1839, m. (1) Annie White, m. (2) Jeanette Dodson, d.

 

13/3/1897

 

4. Lucinda Foster, b. 9/6/1839, m. (1) Charles Alexander, m. (2) Joseph Finegan, d.

20/8/1910

 

5. Nancy Estabrooke, b. 19/8/1841, m. John Meem, d. 31/03/1849

 

6. Perez Dickinson, b. 26/12/1843, m. Margaret Rhea, d. 10/2/1923

 

7. Susan Penniman, b. 10/02/1846, d. 15/05/1847

 

8. Joseph, b. 6/4/1848, d. 8/6/1848

 

9. Isabella White, b. 20/4/1849

 

Perez Dickinson Cowan, b. 26/12/1843, m. Margaret Rhea 26 Oct 1870, d. 10/2/1923. Chil-

dren:

 

1. Margaret McClung, b. 1876, d. 1879

 

2. Eleanor Rhea, b. 5/11/1885, d. 1972

 

3. James Dickinson, b. 17/8/1887, m. Elsie Bailey, d. 1930

James Dickinson, b. 1887, m. Elsie Bailey. Children:

 

1. James Dickinson, b. 24/11/1914, m. Louise Yawger, d. 1995

 

2. Bailey, b. 23/12/1915, m. Margaret Bergius 7 Mar. 1945, d. 7/7/1994

 

3. Robert Rhea, b. 25/12/1922, m. Catherine Krieger

Bailey Cowan, b. 1915, m. Margaret Bergius. Children:

 

1. Dickinson Bergius, b. 30/11/1945, m. Christianne Jane Carlisle

 

2. Sanda Margaret, b. 1/5/1946, m. Duncan Paul Belcher

 

3. Jennifer Agnes, b. 14/2/1949, m. Charles Thomas Alexander Helme

 

4. Sheila Rhea, b. 29/1/1952, m. Roger Gins

 

Dickinson Bergius Cowan, b. 1945, m. Christianne Jane Carlisle. Children:

 

1. Christianne Emily, b. 1977, Durban

 

2. Elizabeth Alice, b. 1979, Durban

 

3. James Carlisle, b. 1981, Durban

 

4. Lucinda Bergius, b. 1983, Durban

 

Notably, the gravestone of the wife of James Cowan, also in the Presbyterian Church

graveyard in Knoxville, declares her to be “a mother in Israel.” 13 We will discuss in chap-

ter 10 the possibility that Presbyterianism served as a haven for Crypto-Jews from Scot-

land and Northern Ireland who settled in Appalachia and became known as Melungeons.

 

Finally, we must consider the coats of arms for the various branches of Clan Cowan.

The symbolism in them is quite revelatory. First, all carry the Tau Cabalistic symbol

(“X”) discussed earlier. Three carry the French fleur-de-lis, derived from the Judaic lily

symbol associated with the House of David. 14 Four carry the scallop shell, a symbol that

indicates the bearers were Jacobite in their sympathies and supporters of the Royal Stew-

art (Judaic) monarchy. And one carries the “centered circle” symbol, another Cabalistic

sign, standing for the Deity.

 

With John Cowane of Stirling, founder of the Merchant Guild Hospital in 1639, we

have the first readily identifiable figure of a second wave of French and Iberian Jewish

families that began to arrive in the sixteenth century, at the time persecutions and expul-

sions of Jews were stepped up on the Continent. Cowane was a money lender, tax farmer

and international trader who owned ships going to Danzig, Hamburg, Sweden and Rus-

sia. It is said that his family first arrived in Scotland around 1517. We will have more to

say about Stirling and its merchants in a later chapter.

 

Chapter 5

 

The Early Jews of France,

700-1200 c.E.

 

Until the recent appearance of a detailed study of Anglo-Norman Jewry, few people

suspected that the Norman capital of Rouen served as a major center of Judaic culture

during the High Middle Ages (1000-1300 C.E.). Golb’s study in 1998 brought to life the

extraordinary story of how Jacob bar Jequthiel, a Jew of Rouen, defied Duke Richard, the

grandfather of William the Conqueror, traveled to Rome, secured the protection of the

pope for French Jews, and in 1022, at the invitation of Baldwin count of Flanders, migrated

with 30 other Rouen Jews to Arras. With ties to Lyon, Paris, Flanders, the Rhineland and

places as far away as Cairo, Jerusalem and Babylon, the Jews of Normandy and Flanders

had their own schools, cemeteries, properties, privileges, and even a head rabbi, an office

transferred to England with the Norman conquest (Golb 1998).

 

Although several sources state that “Jews came to England with the Norman Invasion”

or something akin to this, 1 we have been unable to locate a list of names of these Jewish

families, except by inference from the work of Golb and earlier writers such as Adler (1939).

Renan (1943, pp. 22-23) writes that most Jews of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages

in Italy and Gaul were converts and non-Semitic. It was these Frenchmen who peopled the

Jewries of England and Germany. 2 A paper by ha-Levi (1976) lists the names of Jews living

in England prior to their expulsion in 1290 by Edward I (see appendix C). However, this

list, while useful, shows many Jews identified only by the towns in which they resided in

England, e.g., Jacob of London, Isaac of Lincoln, David of York, and because of this it is

likely that their original French names were lost. Further, the families we would most like

to have listings of are those who came from Europe to England in the Norman entourage

of 1100 C.E. It is these families, we believe, who introduced Judaism to Scotland.

 

Our primary source for this chapter is Esther Benbassa’s The Jews of France (1999).

Benbassa is a Jewish historian, and her book is the most complete and well-documented

available on French Jewry. Benbassa describes the Jewish communities known to be pres-

ent in France prior to 1500 C.E., the time period of most interest to us. This era corre-

sponds most closely to the “first wave” of Jewish arrivals into Scotland. After 1500, we

have the “second wave” of Jews coming to Scotland — the Sephardim fleeing the Inqui-

sition — and we will discuss these as well.

 

As Benbassa notes, Jews from Palestine arrived in Gaul (France) as early as 135 C.E.,

following the unsuccessful revolt by Bar Kokhba against Roman Emperor Hadrian. At

this time, Jews were Roman citizens, and not labeled as “Jews” per se; they could travel

freely throughout the Roman Empire, which stretched from Britain to Central Asia.

 

Benbassa (p. 4) makes several important points on which we will comment:

 

(1) The Jews there [in France] did not all come from Palestine; many of them belonged to the

diaspora, made up in part by populations converted to Judaism. (2) The Christianization of

the Roman Empire under Constantine the Great... and the restrictions that gradually came

to be imposed on the Jews, favored their emigration, particularly to Gaul, which was slower

to become Christianized.... (3) The settlement of Jews along an axis following the valley of

the Rhone and extending from that of the Saone to its juncture with the Rhine corresponds

to the route taken by the Roman legions, which Jews followed as soldiers, tradesmen, or

merchants in search of a better life and more favorable economic conditions.

 

Importantly, Jews were settled where they would have had contact with the Normans,

who arrived in Gaul from Scandinavia around 900 c.E. Jews functioned in Gaul and else-

where as full-fledged Roman citizens, without religious or ethnic hindrance, and were

active traders and merchants. Further, they would not necessarily have had Semitic DNA.

As we shall argue shortly, many, perhaps most, were converts to Judaism from the French

or German regions, so they would have carried primarily Rib DNA. As Benbassa (p. 4)

notes, the Jews

 

... dressed like the rest of the population, bore arms, and spoke the local language; even in

the synagogue. Hebrew was not the only language used for rituals. Their ancestral names—

biblical, Roman, and Gallo-Roman — did not differentiate them from other inhabitants.

 

During the fifth century, just as Columba was converting the Irish and Scottish Celts

to a Christianity that closely followed Jewish practice, Benbassa writes that Jews in France

“lacking the Talmud, adhered closely to the text of the Bible and to certain oral tradi-

tions. There existed a religious confusion between Judaism and Christianity, both with

regard to prescriptions and to worship” (p. 5).

 

Thus we have a loose compatibility between two monotheistic faiths — Christianity

and Judaism — and persons moving back and forth between them up until the early 600s

(Benbassa, p. 6). With the establishment of the Carolingian Empire under Charlemagne

in 800 c.E., the Jews of France were well treated and socially mobile. Especially in their

community in Narbonne, they enjoyed self-governance and moved into the highest polit-

ical and economic advisory positions.

 

Very shortly one finds Jews at the royal court entrusted with diplomatic missions, such as the

one carried out by Isaac the Jew on behalf of Charlemagne to the Abbassid Caliph Harun-al-

Rashid in Baghdad. Polyglot, and having extensive connections throughout the Jewish com-

munities of the Diaspora, they were in a position to provide indispensable contacts within

the young empire. Charlemagne also needed them for economic reasons [p. 6].

 

Together with the Byzantines and Syrians, Jews in France and elsewhere established

international overland and maritime trading routes, controlling the bulk of Mediter-

ranean commerce.

 

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