Background
Hiram Harrison Lowry was born on May 29, 1843 on a farm near Zanesville, Ohio, United States, the son of Hiram and Margaret (Speare) Lowry.
Hiram Harrison Lowry was born on May 29, 1843 on a farm near Zanesville, Ohio, United States, the son of Hiram and Margaret (Speare) Lowry.
In 1864 Lowry entered Ohio Wesleyan University and graduated from that institution in 1867. The same year he was ordained to the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
In 1862 and 1863 Lowry was in the Union army--for fourteen months in active service and then for several months in military hospitals as a patient. In 1867 he sailed for China to join the mission of his Church at Foochow. In the spring of 1869 he was transferred to Peking. Here, together with L. N. Wheeler, he established the Methodist mission in North China.
Upon the retirement of Wheeler because of illness in 1873, Lowry became superintendent of the North China mission and served in this position for twenty years. It was a period when Protestant missions in China were growing rapidly, and when churches in Europe and America were augmenting their efforts abroad. Lowry proved to be an able, broad-minded, unselfish, and diligent administrator. He traveled extensively throughout the region which his colleagues were attempting to occupy and helped them meet the obstacles of their pioneer enterprises, including the acquisition of property in the face of local prejudice and opposition. During much of the time he was also the head of the school for the training of Chinese preachers, an institution which later became the Wiley College of Theology of Peking University.
By 1893 the North China mission had been so enlarged that it was erected into a Conference, and, accordingly, the office of superintendent passed. Lowry was, however, almost immediately made the head of Peking University, which had been begun by his mission. From December 1893 to June 1894 he was acting president and thereafter, president. He held the office during the years when education of a Western type was becoming popular in China, and he helped the institution to take advantage of the situation. In time--with the hearty cooperation of Lowry--the University, later to be known as Yenching, was reorganized to include the higher educational work of several of the Protestant denominations. After this federation was accomplished, Lowry, in 1918, became president emeritus. He served as acting president for a year longer, however, and was the head of Peking Academy, a secondary school of his mission, until his formal retirement from active life in 1922. For years he had struggled against ill health, but he lived to be well past eighty years of age.
On February 28, 1867, Lowry married Parthenia Nicholson.
