John Lowell was born on May 11, 1799 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. His father, Francis Cabot Lowell, was the pioneer of cotton manufacturing in the United States; his mother, Hannah (Jackson) Lowell, was the daughter of the wealthy and locally esteemed Jonathan Jackson. Such aristocratic parentage brought wealth and social prominence to the son.
Lowell gained his preparatory education in the schools of Boston and Edinburgh, Scotland. He entered Harvard College in 1813, but the ill health which seems to have pursued so many youthful collegians of those days compelled his withdrawal two years later.
Lowell started his business career in Boston in 1817. He gave little more attention to his affairs, however, than was necessary. His main interests were intellectual. He read widely and wisely, and rapidly acquired a large and well-selected library. Public affairs also attracted his attention; he sat in the city council and in the state legislature. Here again, however, his interests were more philosophical than practical. Around 1831 he retired from business and spent the remainder of his short life in travel. He died in Bombay, India, before he was thirty-seven.
The endowment of Lowell Institute is provided for in a will which Lowell drew up in 1832 and in a codicil added in 1835. New England he observed, was a "sterile and unproductive land. " Its prosperity depended on the moral qualities, the intelligence, and the information of its inhabitants. Motivated by this idea, he sought to provide free or practically free lectures of the highest type in all branches of human knowledge. He bequeathed half of his estate, amounting to approximately $250, 000, for the establishment of a trust, and made intelligent stipulations for its administration and increase. Lowell combined two dominant tendencies of the New England educational movement of his day: the "higher lecture for the average citizen, " and provision for adult education. The Institute was so liberally endowed, and the trust has been so skilfully administered, that the best work of the world's leading scholars has been made accessible to Boston audiences and, through publication of the lectures, to a much larger reading public. In a sense also the Institute has been a patron of learning, since its liberal stipends have served as an encouragement to those who have been called to its lecture platform. In all respects the Lowell Institute stands as a foundation-stone in the cultural life of New England and as a happy monument to him who placed it there.
Lowell was a founding member of the Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in 1830.
John Lowell was an observer of life far more than an active participant in it.
Lowell married Georgina Margaret (Amory) Lowell in 1825; two children, both daughters, had been born of this happy union. His wife and children died within a few short months in 1830 and 1831.
