Mow

This name was originally derived from the lands of Molle, latterly Mow, in Roxburghshire. Liuluf de Molle appears to have held land in Roxburghshire at the beginning of the twelfth century and his son, Uctred, held the town of Molle and the patronage of the church there prior to 1152. He later granted the church, with its land and pastures, to Kelso Abbey. Radulf de Molle witnessed the settlement of a dispute regarding money due to the church of Roberton in 1279. The name appears in the spelling ‘Mow’, when Robert Mow resigned his lands to the king in 1490 for a regrant to John, his brother. Pitcairn, in his Criminal Trials of Scotland, records the Mows of that Ilk featuring in several sixteenth-century trials. In 1575 the Laird of Mow was slain at the Battle of Redesweire. The name appears again in the north of Scotland when John Mow is listed as master of singing and a burgess of the town of Elgin. In 1789 John Mow of Mains and his brother, William Mow, Writer to the Signet, applied to the Court to alter the spelling of their surname from Mow, to Molle, the ancient form of their name.