LOWELL, JOHN (1743-1802), American jurist, was born in Newburyport (Mass.), on June 17, 1743. He graduated at Harvard in 1760, was admitted to the bar in 1763, represented Newburyport (1776) and Boston (1778) in the Massachusetts assembly, and was a member of the Massachusetts constitutional convention of 1779-80. As a member of the committee appointed to draft a constitution, he secured the insertion of the clause, "all men are born free and equal," which was interpreted by the Supreme Court of the State in 1783 as abolishing slavery in the State. In 1781-83 he was a member of the Continental Congress, which in 1782 made him a judge of the court of appeals for admiralty cases; in 1784 he was a member of the New York Massachusetts boundary commission; in 1789-1801 he was a judge of the United States district court, Massachusetts; and from 18o1 until his death in Roxbury on May 6, 1802, he was a justice of the United States circuit court for the first circuit (Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island).
His son, JOHN LOWELL graduated at Harvard in 1786, was admitted to the bar in 1790 and retired from active practice in 1803. He opposed French influence and the policies of the Democratic party, writing many spirited pamphlets (some signed "The Boston Rebel," some "The Roxbury Farmer"), in cluding: The Antigallican (1797); Remarks on the Hon. J. Q. Adams's Review of Mr. Ames's Works (1809) ; New England
Patriot, being a Candid Comparison of the Principles and Con duct of the Washington and Jefferson Administrations (I81o); Appeals to the People on the Causes and Consequences of War with Great Britain (1811), and Mr. Madison's War (1812).
Another son of the first John Lowell, FRANCIS CABOT LOWELL (1775-1817), the founder in the United States of cotton manu facturing, was born in Newburyport on April 7, '775, graduated at Harvard in 1793, became a merchant in Boston, and, during the War of 1812, with his cousin Patrick Tracy Jackson, made use of the knowledge of cotton-spinning gained by him in England and devised a power loom. Experiments were successfully carried on at Waltham in 1814. Lowell worked hard to secure a protective tariff on cotton goods. The city of Lowell (Mass.), was named in his honour. He died in Boston on Aug. io, 1817.
Francis Cabot Lowell's son, JOHN LOWELL (1799-1836), was born in Boston, travelled in India and the East Indies on business in 1816 and 1817, in 1832 set out on a trip around the world, and on March 4, 1836, died in Bombay. By his will he left $250,000 to establish what is now known as the Lowell institute (q.v.).
See the first lecture delivered before the institute, Edward Everett's A Memoir of Mr. John Lowell, Jr. (Boston, 1840).