LAWRENCE, AMOS ADAMS (1814-1886), American philanthropist, son of Amos Lawrence, was born in Groton (Mass.) on July 31, 1814. He graduated from Harvard in 1835, went into business in Lowell, and in 1837 established in Boston his own counting-house. Lawrence established a hosiery and knit ting mill at Ipswich—the first of importance in the country. In 1849 he founded at Appleton (Wis.) a school named in his honour Lawrence university (now Lawrence college). He also contrib uted to funds for the colonization of free negroes in Liberia. In 1854 he became treasurer of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company (reorganized in 1855 as the New England Emigrant Aid Company), which sent 1,300 settlers to Kansas, where the city of Lawrence was named in his honour. He contributed personally for the famous Sharp rifles, which, packed as "books" and "primers," were shipped to Kansas and afterwards came into the hands of John Brown, who had been a protege of Lawrence.
Though he deplored John Brown's fanaticism, when Brown was arrested he appealed to the governor of Virginia to secure for him a lawful trial. He repeatedly urged the necessity of offering no armed resistance to the Federal Government. Till the very outbreak of the Civil War he was a "law and order" man, and he did his best to secure the adoption of the Crittenden compromise. In 1862 he raised a regiment of cavalry which became the 2nd Massachusetts Regiment of Cavalry. Lawrence built (1873-80) Lawrence hall, Cambridge, for the Episcopal theological school, of which he was treasurer. From 1857 to 1862 he was treasurer of Harvard college, and from 1879 to 1885 was an overseer. He died in Nahant (Mass.) on Aug. 22, 1886.
See William Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence with Extracts from his Diary and Correspondence (Boston, 1888).