Alternate spellings:

Rowly
Rowlee
Rowlea
Rowlie
Rolly
Rollie
 

The name is a Saxon place name translating to something like 'The Field in the Forest'. ROW = forest
LEA = field

The surname ROWLEY is one of the oldest Anglo/Saxon names on record. The first record of it is from Cheshire about the 9th century.

Rowley's were seated as the Lords of Carmichan in Cheshire And Randolph Rowley was the first on record. The family branched to Lawton in Cheshire and Tendring Hall in Suffolk then Hill House, Berkshire, Wykin and Rowley, Shropshire then Yorkshire and Staffordshire. The main stem of the Cheshire family evolved into the Lords Langford.

During the Middle Ages many English families were forces, for political and religious reasons, to migrate to Ireland where they where known collectively as the adventurers for land. Protestant settlers undertook to keep their faith and in doing so were granted land owned by Catholic Irish. These were known as 'undertakers'.

The Rowley family were one of these undertakers ans settled in Derry where they were seated in Castle Rowley.

The new world offered greater opportunity and an escape from the rigous of rural Britain and later, the industrial revolution. Many families including the Rowleys left England for America, Barbados, Australia and New Zealand. John and Joseph Rowley set up house in Barbados in 1686. David, George, Henry, Samuel, Thomas ans William Rowley arrived in Philadelphia between 1840 and 1870.

Joseph Rowley Sailed to New Zealand with 8 children in the ship 'SS Mystery' which arrived in Littleton on the 30th March 1859.

The answer undoubtedly lies in the town of Bilston, West Midlands. Bilston was a mining town and so over stacked with furnace chimneys that it is said that one could read ones newspaper by the light of the furnaces throughout the night. Joseph, like his father, John, was a tinsmith in this miserable town.

If these conditions weren't enough there were two outbreaks cholera, one in 1832 which killed 1 in 20 of the population in seven weeks, the next outbreak was in 1849 when 600 people died.

Although there is no evidence, I think it is a fair bet that these cholera epidemics were a major factor in moving the family.