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 sixt3^-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 Rev. 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 Athenaeum, 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 



