Hannah, wife of Jacob Lemasters, has no known maiden name — and "Hannah Lowe," the name carried by roughly 132 online trees, is refuted: the whole claim traces to a single unsourced field on one Find a Grave memorial, copied from tree to tree until repetition made it look like evidence.
The couple
Jacob Lemasters (born 21 March 1770 in Pennsylvania; died 21 September 1852 in Shelby County, Ohio) married Hannah (born 30 September 1778; died 16 June 1849) around 1794 — that marriage date is computed, not recorded; no record of the marriage has ever been found. The family was in Mason County, Virginia (now West Virginia) by 1806, moved to Champaign County, Ohio, about 1815, and settled in Shelby County. Jacob's 1852 Shelby County probate names no maiden name for her. Their children all died before Ohio began civil death registration in December 1908, so no child's death certificate exists that could name their mother's maiden name.
Where "Lowe" came from
The claim has exactly one root. Find a Grave memorial 13962384 — "Hannah Lemasters," Roberts Cemetery, Port Jefferson, Shelby County, Ohio — carries a user-entered "Maiden Name: Lowe" field. The memorial has no biography and cites no source for that field. From there, about 132 Ancestry trees repeat "Hannah Lowe," citing the memorial's index entry as their authority. Two of those trees, read in full, list her parents as "Unknown father / Unknown mother" and attach no source at all for "Lowe" — their sources are other trees, a mortality schedule, and the same Find a Grave index. One tree even renders her "Hannah (Lemasters) Lowe," a data-entry garble typical of copying. The trees cannot even agree on her birthplace — Maryland in some, Pennsylvania in others. That is not a paper trail; it is an echo. Grade: rejected — "Hannah Lowe" is refuted as circular.
Testing it in the records
If Hannah had been a Lowe, the counties where this family actually lived should show it. They do not.
- Kanawha County marriage ministers' returns, 1792–1813 (eye-read in full, October 2026): five Lemasters-variant brides married there — Mary, Annah, Agnes, Jane, and Charity — three of them to Boggs men. Jacob Lemasters appears as a groom nowhere, and no bride is a Hannah Lemasters. The one Low bride in the returns is Judy Low, who married Elias Fordham on 23 September 1811 — a Low family's presence in the county, nothing tying her to Hannah.
- Mason County marriage records: the general index's Lemaster entries are all late (1870s–1880s); the earliest pages of the 1806–1850 register show no Lemaster variant. No Jacob, no Hannah.
- Mason County deed indexes, L section (read by transcript, October 2026): the only Lemaster entries are for Isaac. No Jacob — and no Lowe or Low grantor or grantee appears at all.
- 1810 census: a Benjamin Low household exists in Kanawha County — the only Lowe/Low household found in either county. Nothing in it shows a daughter Hannah born about 1778, and nothing connects it to Jacob's family. Grade: unproven.
- Marriage searches: Ancestry's Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio marriage collections return no Jacob Lemasters (any spelling) marrying any Hannah in 1790–1796.
None of this proves Hannah was not born a Low — it proves that no record says she was, and that the only "source" for the name is one unsourced memorial field. Those are very different things, and the second one is what the trees are standing on.
The verdict
- "Hannah Lowe": rejected — circular, traced to a single unsourced Find a Grave field.
- Hannah's maiden name: unknown. No source names it. The "Walker" guess sometimes floated from a son's middle name has zero supporting evidence and is also rejected as a basis for naming her.
- The younger Hannah Lemasters — widow of Lemuel L. Lemasters, who died about 1843 — is a different woman; records about her are not records about Jacob's wife.
The next record
One record class in the right county is still unread: the Kanawha County deed indexes, I–M volumes (grantor index, FamilySearch film 524960; grantee index, film 460395). The L surnames fall in those volumes. A deed into Jacob, a dower release signed by Hannah, or a Low conveyance naming either of them would be the first actual evidence in this search. Kanawha's marriage bonds survive only as loose papers at the courthouse in Charleston — no film exists.
Until one of those surfaces, the honest entry for Jacob Lemasters's wife is the one the records support: Hannah, maiden name unknown.
