I am a descendant of William Gowdy and Isabella Fleming. I did a considerable amount of research a few years ago sorting out their descendants, many of whom moved on to Illinois from Ohio. They had come to the Clark/Greene Co area from what was then York Co, now Adams Co, Pennsylvania, via Kentucky. See my web page at
http://www.nas.com/~merrilygl/. I hope any of you researching the Ohio Gowdies will take my information and research it further. I welcome any updates, changes, etc. You will also find a link to another descendant's web page. There appeared to be a second family of Gowdy's in Greene Co - possibly cousins to my line. But I was unable to sort through all of them. Your John may well have been a brother to my William.