Lawrence Mott

Who was Lawrence Mott?

Jordan Lawrence Mott IV, often referred to as Jordan Lawrence Mott III and better known as Lawrence Mott, was an American novelist and writer on the outdoor life. He was the great-grandson of Jordan L. Mott, who founded the J. L. Mott Iron Works in New York. His grandfather was Jordan Lawrence Mott II, and his father was Jordan Lawrence Mott III.

After graduating from Harvard, Mott worked as a journalist, and married Carolyn Pitkin. In 1912 he sailed to China on a freighter, the Indrade, with a light opera singer, Mrs Francis Hewitt Bowne: he was listed as purser and she was disguised as a cabin boy. The couple married in 1928 after their respective partners had divorced them. His published works include Jules of the Great Heart: “free” trapper and outlaw in the Hudson Bay region in the early days, To the Credit of the Sea, The White Darkness, and other stories of the Great North-West, and Prairie, Snow and Sea. He pioneered fishing for steelhead on the North Umpqua River, Oregon, and a bridge and a section of the North Umpqua Trail bear the name Mott in his memory. He established a fishing camp near Steamboat Creek, where he died, of leukemia, in 1931.