John Page Sowerby
(1841-1920)
8 June 1865

Volume 12, page 321, sitting number16,432.

Born on 10 November 1841 and baptised on 6 January 1842 at Stokesley in Yorkshire, John Page Sowerby was the youngest son of John Page Sowerby and Margaret née Coates. In 1867 he gratuated with a BA from Trinity College, Cambridge, before studying Law at the Inner Temple. He was called to the bar on 27 January 1868 and was later a member of the Northeastern Circuit.

He appears on the 1861 census, a  19-year-old ‘Attorney’s Articled Clerk’ living at Stokesley with his parents, three older siblings and three servants. His father and two older brothers were all attorneys.

He never married and was still living at Stokesley when the census was taken in 1911.

John Page Sowerby died, aged 78, on 19 May 1920 and was buried in the churchyard of St Peter and St Paul in Stokesley. At the time of his death he was a magistrate for the North Riding and for the County of Durham.

His estate was valued at £121,737. He left ‘all his manors and lands in trust for Godfrey Laird Rutherford, solictor’s clerk, for life, conditionally on his taking the surname of Sowerby and residing for 20 years within five miles of Stokesley for a period of not less than 6 months in each year. Neither he nor his successors shall be or become members of the Roman Catholic Church or any brotherhood or sisterhood in connection therewith, nor shall have married a Roman Catholic’ (Kington Times, 25 September 1920).