Samuel Rowe (11 November 1793 – 15 September 1853) was a farmer's son who became a bookseller, vicar and antiquarian of Devon, England.
[1] Rowe became a close friend of Thomas Byrth (1793–1849), an avid if untutored reader and scholar.
[2] In 1817 Rowe joined the Plymouth Athenaeum, which was called "the centre of all literary, scientific and artistic life in South Devon."
He was then transferred to the vacant incumbency of St. George, the older church of Stonehouse: these preferments were all in the gift of Hatchard.
[5] He also published epitomes of William Paley's Philosophy and Evidences, and several religious books and tracts.
[6] In 1830 Rowe published an article on Antiquarian Investigations in the Forest of Dartmoor, Devon in the Transactions of the Plymouth Athenaeum.
For example, it discusses the Drewsteignton cromlech (Spinsters' Rock) in some detail and gives views on the possibility that it was a Druid monument expressed by writers including Borlase, Chapple and Polwhele.
It was thoroughly revised by his nephew, J. Brooking Rowe, and published in 1895 with much new material added, and with many illustrations by the Devon artist Frederick John Widgery.
[11] For example, different opinions are given on the origin of Grimspound, Polwhele states that it was a seat of judicature for the Cantred of Darius; Samuel Rowe, that it was a Belgic or Saxon camp; Ormerod considered it a cattle-pound pure and simple; Spence Bate was convinced that it was nothing more than a habitation of tinners and of no great age; while now the work of the Rev S. Baring-Gould and Mr Robert Burnard goes far to show that its construction reaches back into a remote past, and that its antiquity is greater than any former investigator dared to assign to it.