The Barrow Family Tree is a remarkable example of a family tree passed down for generations, and it is useful despite its uncertainties and errors and lack of documentary evidence! For example, Moses Baruh Lousada aka Antonio Louzada aka Moses Barrow was clearly not the father of Simon Barrow of Barbados; Moses died in 1699 and Simon was born in 1709! The author fell into the trap of supposing that because Moses Baruh Lousada was sometimes known as Moses Barrow he must have been a Barrow! We suggest that the author was trying to explain the origin of the Baruch Lousada name - but if so his hypothesis is incorrect as the name was already present in Livorno in 1640. The Barrow Tree does however show that Moses Baruh Lousada was born in Spain in 1629 a suggestion that accords with the movement of related families from Villaflor in Portugal to Madrid in the early 1600s and for which evidence was eventually discovered in 2021 (where it can be seen that Antonio Fernandes Louzada was recorded as being of 20 years in line 5). The Barrow Tree is silent on the Barrows' Ashkenasi background, perhaps understandably as marriages made the Barrow descendants increasingly Sephardic. We think it possible that there was an earlier Ashkenasi link between the second Simon Barrow and his wife, a speculation that is partly supported by the data we have found. And though the first Simon Barrow was a brother-in-law of Isaac Levi of Amsterdam, the Barrow Tree does not indicate who the Levis were and it took us much work to even partially understand this and to distinguish them from the Levis of Portsmouth. Jacob Levi Montefiore is erroneously given as a brother of Joseph Barrow Montefiore - in fact he was a nephew. Though the chart shows that the (incorrect) father of Simon Barrow of Barbados married a Lousada, this makes a further error because Moses Baruh Lousada can only be found to have had a wife (and a second wife) who was a Henriques Faro, but it is possible and indeed likely that Simon's father Baruch married a Livorno Baruch Lousada. Of the 3 Aaron Baruch Lousadas who died in 1768, none was the son of Moses Baruh Lousada as shown in the chart. The tree enthusiastically links the Barrows to speculative strands of Jewish history and a short Barrow family history by General Sir George de Symons Barrow suggests that he may be the source of some of these tendencies! A supplementary family history by Rear-Admiral Benjamin Wingate Barrow provides more recent insights. |