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Low, Sylvester, Stake tithing clerk, is a son of David and Jane Oliver Low, and was born March 12, 1836, in the parish of Tealing, Forfarshire, Scotland. His parents were poor and at the age of seven he had to help making a living, working on a farm in summer and going to school in winter, gaining a tolerable education. At fourteen he went to work for himself by farming and serving a term of apprentice to a miller, receiving therefor $17.50 a year. In 1854, while working in Arbroath, he heard the Gospel for the first time. Having been brought up in the Free Church of Scotland and partaken more or less of its traditions and prejudices, it was more than he could comprehend the (then) astounding doctrine that God and His only begotten Son had again spoken to the people of the earth and restored the Gospel in its fullness, badly jarring the young man's spiritual ideas. After much reflection and prayer he became converted and was baptized Jan. 24, 1855, by Elder John Gillis. A storm of opposition and abuse from friends and relatives followed, from which he escaped by embarking for Zion, sailing from Liverpool April 22, 1855, arriving at New York thirty days later. After many vicissitudes he succeeded in reaching Salt Lake City November 13th of the same year. He was variously employed in different places and took an active part in the "Buchanan war" of 1857, spending seven weeks in the campaign of opposition to the approach of Johnston's army. He was married Feb. 28, 1858, to Ann A. Paton and in 1860 moved to Cache valley, settling in Providence, where in 1863 he was called to help settle Bear Lake valley and took an active part in that work, returning to Cache valley in 1865. In November, 1886, he was called on a mission to Great Britain, arriving there November 19th following and laboring diligently in several fields, being released Aug. 6, 1888. For some time following he engaged in the work of obtaining genealogical information, with good success, having secured for himself and others the great number of 44,000 names of the dead, with particulars and dates. He returned home in April, 1899, and in the spring of 1892 went to Alberta, Canada, where for the first few years his labors were such as is common in pioneer life, but of late have consisted chiefly in attending to the duties of Stake tithing clerk, Stake ecclesiastical clerk and other similar business, in all of which he takes great pleasure, being blessed with health and vigor of mind, and body beyond the average of people at his time of life. He has had twenty-one children born to him, seventeen of whom are living, and sixty grandchildren, forty-four of them being alive, and finds his greatest delight in happy commingling with them and his brethren. Andrew Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia: A Compilation of Biographical Sketches of Prominent Men and Women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 4 vols. Salt Lake City 2:17 |
Biographies 
