Charles Russell Lowell, Sr.

Charles Russell Lowell, Sr. (15 August 1782 Boston – 20 January 1861 Cambridge, Massachusetts) was a Unitarian minister and the son of judge John Lowell.

Biography

He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and attended The Roxbury Latin School and later Harvard College in 1800 where he studied law and then theology. After two years in Edinburgh, Scotland and one year on the Continent, Lowell was, from 1806 until his death, pastor of the West Congregational (Unitarian) Church of Boston, a charge in which Cyrus A. Bartol was associated with him after 1837.^[1] From that year until 1840, he traveled extensively in Europe and the east. During the latter part of his life Lowell officiated only occasionally in his church.^[2]

Lowell was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1814,^[3] and served on its board of councilors from 1820 to 1853.^[4]

He married Harriet, daughter of Robert T. Spence, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, an officer in the U. S. Navy. Harvard gave him the degree of D.D. in 1823. He was a fellow of its corporation from 1818 until 1833. He was a member of literary societies in the United States and elsewhere. The "Proceedings" of a parish meeting that was held in his memory were published in 1861.^[2]

Almost alone, he spoke out from the pulpit against slavery to Boston’s elite.

Family

He was half-brother of Francis Cabot Lowell, father of James Russell Lowell and Robert Traill Spence Lowell, grandfather of Civil War General Charles Russell Lowell, and the son of John Lowell, "The Old Judge".^[2]

Works

He contributed largely to periodical literature and published many separate discourses, a volume of Occasional Sermons, one of Practical Sermons (Boston, 1855), Meditations for the Afflicted, Sick, and Dying and Devotional Exercises for Communicants.^[2]

See also

• Lowell family

Notes

1. Chisholm 1911.
2. Wilson & Fiske 1900.
3. American Antiquarian Society Members Directory
4. Dunbar, B. (1987). Members and Officers of the American Antiquarian Society. Worcester: American Antiquarian Society.

References

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Lowell, John". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
•  Wilson, James Grant; Fiske, John, eds. (1900). "Lowell, John". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton.

External links

• Annotated volumes of the Massachusetts Register by Charles Lowell is at the Andover-Harvard Theological Library at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.