Robert Kenneth Callow, 15 February 1901 - 12 April 1983

Abstract

Robert Kenneth Callow was born on 15 February 1901 at Goring -on - Thames, Oxfordshire. His father, a member of a Manx family, was Cecil Burman Bannister Callow; he was born in 1865 and died at an early age in 1912, when Kenneth was only 11 years old. Kenneth’s paternal grandfather, Edward Callow, had been very interested in the Isle of Man and in the history of his family. He was the author of a book entitled From King Orry to Queen Victoria , giving a history of the Isle of Man and an account of the various legends associated with that island. Kenneth inherited this interest in the history of his family, which led him back to Ballafagle-e-Callow, a hamlet southeast of Ramsey. Kenneth Callow could not confirm his grandfather’s belief that he was a descendant of William Callow, the Quaker (1629-75), who is buried in the old burial ground of the Manx Quakers at Ruillick-ny-Quackeryn, a nearby hill. The church ­ yards of various villages in the neighbourhood contain many memorials to Callows, but with the incompleteness of detail in early records the church registers do not enable the family tree to be constructed with any degree of reliability. The earliest record of Kenneth’s family is of Edward Callow, a shipwright of Douglas, who lived from 1754 to 1831. His grandson, Kenneth’s grandfather, described him self in 1846 as ‘of the Stock Exchange’. At some stage of his life his fortunes changed for the worse owing to some financial disaster, and he subsequently lived in retirement. Kenneth’s father, the youngest of six children, was apprenticed as an electrical engineer, held posts with various firms including the shipbuilders Thorneycroft in the Isle of Wight, and an electrical contractor at Goring-on-Thames, where Kenneth was born.