Daniel Lothrop was an American publisher and businessman. He was a founder of D. Lothrop & Company in Boston, Massachusetts.
Background
Daniel Lothrop was born on August 11, 1831 in Rochester, New Hampshire, United States, the son of Daniel and Sophia (Horne) Lothrop. Both his parents were of American descent for several generations; his father, descended from Mark Lothrop who was in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1643, also numbered John and Priscilla Alden among his ancestors.
Education
Daniel was given a classical education.
Career
At fourteen Lothrop was diverted to a business career when an elder brother asked him to take charge of his drug store while its owner studied medicine. The youthful manager found the Rochester store so profitable that in 1848 he opened others in Newmarket and Laconia. In 1850 he bought out a book store in Dover, New Hampshire. Soon he introduced the sale of books into his drug stores and later made some small experiments in publishing.
In 1856 he went West and established a drug store and a bank in St. Peter, Minnesota, which was then the capital of the Territory; but the transfer of the seat of government to St. Paul and the panic of 1857 caused the failure of both ventures. After a period of inactivity, he returned East, and in 1868 established a publishing business, D. Lothrop & Company, in Boston. He had carefully matured his plans and determined that his policy should be to cater to the needs of Sunday-schools and to specialize in juvenile literature. He met with such success in this undertaking that, notwithstanding severe losses incurred in the famous Boston fire of 1872, he expanded his business in 1874 and again in 1887.
He sought to choose the material he published for its interest as well as for its informative and edifying qualities, and though his Sunday-school books had the inevitable moral note, they usually contained things that appealed to the children themselves rather than the more solemn matter that their elders thought they ought to have. In addition to publishing works of such well-known writers as Edward Everett Hale, Thomas Nelson Page, and Margaret Sidney, he founded several popular juvenile periodicals, the best-known of which was Wide Awake, established in 1875 with Mary Mapes Dodge as a prominent contributor.
Achievements
Connections
Lothrop married, first, on July 25, 1860, Ellen Morrill of Dover, New Hampshire, who died in 1880; and, second, on October 4, 1881, Harriett Mulford Stone, who wrote under the name of Margaret Sidney. He had one daughter by the second marriage.