422 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 
if not the founder, of scientific agriculture and horticulture in 
New England. John Lowell—the father of John Amory 
Lowell — was elected into the Academy in the year 1804, 
soon after the decease of his father, the Hon. John Lowell, 
first judge of the United States District Court of Massachu- 
setts, under a commission from Washington. This office is 
now held by his great-grandson, the eldest son of our deceased 
associate, who has been a Fellow since the year 1877, thus 
continuing the line from the very foundation of the Academy, 
for Judge Lowell was one of the sixty-two members incorpo- 
rated by the charter in 1780. In tracing the genealogy one 
step farther back, we come (as is almost universal in New 
England families of note) upon a clergyman, the Rey. John 
Lowell, of Newbury, a man of mark in his day. 
Mr. Lowell was the fourth of his family to be a member of 
the Corporation of Harvard University, to which he gave a 
continuous and most valuable service of forty years. He was 
for more than fifty years one of the directors of the Suffolk 
Bank, which was chartered in his time, and which early estab- 
lished a very useful plan for the redemption of the currency 
of the New England banks in Boston. Not to mention other 
important public trusts, —as of the Athenzeum, of the Massa- 
chusetts General Hospital, of the Agricultural Trustees, of 
the Provident Institution for Savings, to all of which he ren- 
dered assiduous and wise service, — nor to refer here to the 
very important part which he has taken for a lifetime in the 
development of the manufacturing interests of Massachusetts, 
especially as prosecuted in the town which was named in com- 
memoration of similar services by his cousin, — we proceed to 
speak of that most important “corporation sole ” founded by 
that cousin, the Lowell Institute. This trust was specifically 
consigned to our late associate and to such successor as he 
should appoint, — with preference to the family and the name 
of Lowell, — subject to no other than a formal visitatorial 
control, mainly for auditorship. And “to him, single and 
alone, it fell to shape the whole policy and take the whole 
direction of this great educational foundation,” the history of 
which for almost half a century has justly been said to be a 
