Ireland's Valuation office conducted its first survey of property ownership in Ireland from 1847 to 1864. This survey became known as "Griffiths Valuation" after Richard Griffith who was the director of the office at that time. The survey was used to determine the amount of tax each person should pay towards the support of the poor within their poor law union. This involved determining the value of all privately held lands and buildings in rural as well as urban areas to figure the rate at which each unit of property could be rented year after year. The resulting survey was arranged by barony and civil parish with an index to the townlands appearing in each volume. Griffith's Valuation can be used as an excellent census substitute for the years after the Great Famine as censuses prior to 1901 were destroyed. [1]
Lucky for our study, the Griffith's Valuation started in the south and moved north. In fact, Kilkenny was the first county surveyed. This means the Valuation covers at its earliest dates the Bowe territory on the Tipperary/Kilkenny/Laois borderlands.
Griffith's maps are not ideal for frequency studies because they do not capture people who did not live on at least an acre, and they may include the same individual more than once, as both tenant and sublessor. But they are helpful in noting locations.
A) The maps below were created as an act of genealogical kindness by Howard Mathieson.
Showing Boundaries … View Enlarged
Showing Topography … View Enlarged
B) The maps and numbers by county attachments below were created by Rootsmap Surname Distribution Maps.
Bowe
Bowe Map (.pdf)
Bowe (262 households): numbers by county (.pdf)
As with the 1654 Down Survey and the 1911 Census, the Bowe surname shows its highest prevalence in County Leix/Laois/Queens.
Boe
Boe Map (pdf.)
Boe (20 households): numbers by county (.pdf)
This possible variant, while almost exclusive to Tipperary in the 19th-century Griffith's Valuation, was more predominate in Kilkenny (22), and Wexford (10) in the 1659 "Census." At that time there were just 7 in Tipperary. It looks like the origin of this form is Kilkenny, but it is unlikely that so many families died out while those in Tipperary continued to be productive, thus shifting the geographic balance to Tipperary. More likely, families using this form early on may well have become Bowe, or even Bowes, along the way.
Bowes
Bowes Map (pdf.)
Bowes (87 households): numbers by county (.pdf)
By the time of the Griffith's Valuation some families in Ireland used the names Bowe and Bowes interchangeably, possibly accounting for some of the overlap in counties Kilkenny and Leix/Laois/Queens.
The name Bowes does not appear in the 1654 Down Survey as a principal Irish name anywhere. Since by the time of the Griffith's Valuation the name Bowes is less frequent than Bowe, it either did not show in 1654 as a principal Irish name in any county, or was not considered an Irish name even if it may have been used has a variation of Bowe, something we don't know about at that early date.
Bow
This possible variation only occurs three times in Waterford and once in Tipperary. If these families were related to the Bowe families–which seems unlikely since Bow is stronger in Waterford where Bowe is not–for some reason it was far less common to drop the "e" than to add an “s”.
Bogue
Bogue Map (.pdf)
Bogue (48 households): numbers by county (.pdf)
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