Rowe was born in Plymouth on 12 June 1837, the only son of Joshua Brooking Rowe, printer and bookseller of Plymouth, and his second wife Harriett Caroline, daughter of Captain Charles Patey, R.N.
A paper The Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, and Amphibians of Devon, which he read before the Plymouth Institution in 1862, was issued the following year.
In 1862 he helped to form the Devon Association, of which he was president in 1882, and joint honorary secretary from 1901 until his death.
[1] In December 1864 he married at St. Andrew's, Plymouth, Sara Foale, daughter of Henry Mews, of Plympton; they had no children.
[1] Rowe revised Samuel Rowe's Perambulation of Dartmoor (1896), and also published:[1] He wrote for many local periodicals, and was joint editor of Devon Notes and Queries, some of his contributions to which were reprinted separately.