Excerpt from Lowndes of South Carolina: An Historical and Genealogical Memoir

The name of Lowndes, an uncommon one in the northern states of the Union, has been from an early period socially conspicuous throughout the southern country. The several families of Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina cherished till recently the belief that they were all descendants in common of but one and the same branch of an ancient county family of England. This belief had in it much to appeal to the generous traits and hospitable character of the southern planters, who for a large part of each year lived in comparative retirement. They were always ready to assume, in the absence of anything to the contrary, that others of their name and class were of their kith and their kin, since they could thus claim the right to make them more welcome to their homes. While, too, such a belief gratified their love of hospitality, it enlarged their acquaintance, widened and deepened the current of their friendships, and increased the consideration and influence of their name.

Like others among the older English families of the South they accepted their family traditions, and believed them without question as they increased by repetition and friendly intercourse. Nor did they find their conviction of a wide-scattered kindred in the colonies shaken, even when the old family seals from different parts of the country indicated a separation of their ancestors in England, relatively as wide as their own settlements in the original colonies. Attaching its proper significance to heraldic distinctions, they were yet ignorant of the rules of heraldry and confused in recent generations their arms. They neglected their old seals and turned to later English dictionaries of heraldry for their bearings and mottoes. They sometimes bore at random the arms of one family of the name or another, and were unconscious of the obligation to prove their hereditary right to their use.

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