Francis Cabot Lowell

Background

Francis Lowell was born on April 7, 1775, in the city of Newburyport, Massachusetts, the son of John Lowell, a prominent lawyer, and Susanna Cabot, the daughter of a wealthy family of merchant shippers.

Education

In 1786, Lowell graduated from Phillips Academy. In 1793, he graduated from Harvard College.

Career

He shortly afterward went to sea on family ships. His marriage in 1798 joined him to two other substantial shipping families. By 1810 he was a major merchant in his own right; his trade encompassed Europe, Canada, India, and China.

In 1810 Lowell made an extended visit to England, where he was fascinated by the power loom, not yet available in America. Since it was illegal to export either models or designs, he studied the looms so thoroughly that with the help of a skilled mechanic, Paul Moody, he was able to have them reproduced from his memory and drawings on his return to Boston. The power loom was pivotal in the American attempt to compete in textile manufactures at a time when capital and technological superiority still belonged to the English.

The Boston Manufacturing Company was chartered in 1812 with an authorized capital of $400, 000. Lowell, five brothers-in-law, and others in the mercantile community provided the large sums of capital necessary for what quickly became a major enterprise. In 1814 a mill was in operation at Waltham, Mass. , which not only exploited the power loom but also, and for the first time, contained all of the processes of spinning and weaving cotton cloth under one roof. The Waltham mill was the parent of the famous mills at Lowell, Mass. Lowell was one of the first American company towns, characterized by a paternalism that has been both praised and damned.

Lowell was an active lobbyist for the protective tariff and in 1816 was influential in achieving the first American tariff that acknowledged an "infant industries" principle and provided a substantial duty on foreign cotton goods.

Francis Cabot Lowell died on August 10, 1817, at the early age of 42, from pneumonia.

Achievements

• The merchant and manufacturer, Francis Cabot Lowell introduced the power loom and the integrated factory system to American cotton textile manufactures.
  
  Francis Lowell was inducted into the Junior Achievement U. S. Business Hall of Fame in 2013.

Views

Quotations: "Gardeners instinctively know that flowers and plants are a continuum and that the wheel of garden history will always be coming full circle. "

"One lifetime is never enough to accomplish one's horticultural goals. If a garden is a site for the imagination, how can we be very far from the beginning?"

Connections

In 1798, Francis Cabot Lowell married Hannah Jackson, daughter of Jonathan Jackson and Hannah Tracy. They had four children.

Father:

John Lowell

John Lowell was an American lawyer, selectman, jurist, delegate to the Congress of the Confederation and federal judge.

Mother:

Susannah Lowell (Cabot)

Sister:

Susanna Cabot Gorham (Lowell)

half-sister:

Anna Cabot Lowell

half-sister:

Rebecca Russell Gardner (Lowell)

half-sister:

Mary Lowell

half-sister:

Elizabeth Cutts Dutton (Lowell)

half-sister:

Sarah Champney Lowell

Half-brother:

John Lowell, Jr.

John Lowell, Jr. was an American lawyer and notable member of the Federalist Party in the early days of the United States of America.

Half-brother:

Charles Russell Lowell, Sr.

Charles Russell Lowell, Sr. was a Unitarian minister.

Wife:

Hannah Gardner Lowell (Jackson)

Daughter:

Susan Cabot Lowell

Son:

Edward Jackson Lowell

Son:

John Lowell, Jr.

John Lowell, Jr. was an American businessman, early philanthropist and through his will, founder of the Lowell Institute.

Son:

Francis Cabot Lowell, Jr.