If you are making out a pedigree you must be on your guard, for I have been told that all the foundlings of the city of Lowell (and there are a good many of them) are christened with the name. And it is sometimes assumed. Some twenty years ago I received a letter from a person in New York informing me that he was about to assume the name. I paid no attention to the letter, thinking it a trick (as I am sometimes the subject of such) to get an autograph, but, sure enough, he presently sent me a newspaper in which was advertised a legal authentication of his change of name. The family came from Yardley in Worcestershire, where, I believe, some monuments of them remain in the churchyard. They were a _visitation_ family. I hoped to visit Yardley the last time I was in England, but was prevented by being suddenly summoned to Cambridge to receive a degree. The only Lowells now left in England that I could find are the descendants of Rev. Samuel of Bristol, England, who went back from America--or, rather, whose father went. My father saw him in England seventy years ago, and the relationship between them was recognized on both sides. How near it was I have no means of knowing. I have somewhere, but cannot lay my hand on it, a deed of the first John Lowle of Newbury. It is witnessed by Somebody who came out as clerk with Perceval, and seems to be in his handwriting. _How_ we are descended from Perceval I know not, but Ebenezer must have known who his grandfather was, and his son would hardly have ventured (in those more scrupulous days) to have assumed arms that did not belong to him. Perceval wrote some verses (neither better nor worse than such usually are) on the death of the first Governor Winthrop. You will find them (with a palpable error or two of copier or printer) in the appendix to the second volume of Winthrop’s “Life and Letters.” I remain, Very truly yours, J. R. LOWELL. * * * * * ELMWOOD, 23d July, 1875. DEAR SIR,--I have no doubt you are right in putting the birth of Ebenezer L. in 1675. My father in his family Bible says he died “in 1711 _æt._ 36.” The faded ink shows that this was written many years ago, and I have no doubt he had authority for it. He goes on to say that his widow “married Philip Bougardus, Esq., and died 1761, leaving one daughter married to Eneas Mackay.” I have searched in vain for a bundle of pedigrees (collected by my father) which seem to have gone astray during my two years’ absence in Europe. They carried the family back to the thirteenth century (I think), and were obtained from the Heralds’ Office.