John Lowell

Who was John Lowell?

John Lowell was an American lawyer, selectman, jurist, delegate to the Congress of the Confederation and federal judge. Known within his family as “The Old Judge,” distinguishing him from the proliferation of Johns, John Lowell is considered to be the patriarch of the Boston Lowells. He, with each of his three wives, established three distinct lines of the Lowell clan that, in turn, propagated celebrated poets, authors, jurists, educators, merchants, bankers, national heroes, activists, innovators and philanthropists. John Lowell, his descendants, and many other well established New England families defined American life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.