Walter Lowrie was an American politician. He was a United States Senator from Pennsylvania from 1819 to 1825.
Background
Walter Lowrie, the son of John and Catherine (Cameron) Lowrie, was born on December 10, 1784 in Edinburgh, Scotland. About 1792 his family came to Huntington County, Pennsylvania, and a few years later settled in Butler (then part of Allegheny) County. John Lowrie was an enterprising farmer, a stanch Presbyterian, and influential in his community. Walter was reared on the farm.
Education
Lowrie attended a subscription school and began to study the classics under Reverend John McPherrin with a view to entering the ministry.
Career
In 1807 Lowrie went to Butler to teach school. There, attracted by the opportunities of public life, he was successively a clerk, member of the board of commissioners, and justice of the peace. He also opened a store in partnership with his brother. In 1811-1812 he served in the state House of Representatives and in 1812 was elected state senator as a Democrat, holding his seat until his resignation in 1819 to enter the United States Senate. His maiden effort in the Senate was a speech on January 20, 1820 on the Missouri question in which he boldly announced that "if the alternative be a dissolution of this Union, or the extension of slavery over this whole Western country, I, for one, will choose the former".
He was a member of the committee on public lands and also of the committees on roads and canals, accounts, finance, and Indian affairs. He was an ardent temperance advocate, and a founder of the congressional prayer meeting. After one term as senator he was secretary of the Senate from 1825 until 1836. In 1836 Lowrie was elected corresponding secretary of the Western Foreign Missionary Society, which a year later became the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church (1836-1868). He later declared that the sacrifices and self-denial involved in the post were the charms by which the office secured its incumbent. Invariably in close touch with all phases of the work, he corresponded extensively with missionaries abroad, solicited contributions for the cause, personally supervised the sending of household provisions and farm implements to the Indians, and frequently visited the Indian missions in the West.
Achievements
Politics
Lowrie was a member of the Republican Party. As a member of the committee on public lands, he opposed a revision of the land policy which would place it upon a cash rather than a credit basis and championed the cause of land purchasers and Western settlers.
Connections
On January 14, 1808, Lowrie married Amelia McPherrin, the daughter of his preceptor. Three of his sons were foreign missionaries. James Walter Lowrie was his grandson. His first wife, by whom he had eight children, died in 1832, and two years later he married Mary K. Childs.