Lowells of Massachusetts

"[A] stirring saga. . . Vivid and intimate, Ms. Sankovitch's account entertains us with Puritans and preachers, Tories and rebels, abolitionists and industrialists, lecturers and poets . . . Ms. Sankovitch has made a compelling contribution to Massachusetts and American History."-Roger Lowenstein, The Wall Street Journal

"Sankovitch has searched out these letters to write the powerful story of one of America's most extraordinary families, a family that helped shape the course of American history in dramatic and decisive ways. . . By the final pages of this volume, one feels deeply attached to the individual Lowells, while also exhilarated at having experienced this grand sweep of American history." -Charlotte Gordon, Washington Post

The Lowells of Massachusetts were a remarkable family. They were settlers in the New World in the 1600s, revolutionaries creating a new nation in the 1700s, merchants and manufacturers building prosperity in the 1800s, and scientists and artists flourishing in the 1900s. For the first time, Nina Sankovitch tells the story of this fascinating and powerful dynasty in The Lowells of Massachusetts.

Though not without scoundrels and certainly no strangers to controversy, the family boasted some of the most astonishing individuals in America's history: Percival Lowle, the patriarch who arrived in America in the seventeenth to plant the roots of the family tree; Reverend John Lowell, the preacher; Judge John Lowell, a member of the Continental Congress; Francis Cabot Lowell, manufacturer and, some say, founder of the Industrial Revolution in the US; James Russell Lowell, American Romantic poet; Lawrence Lowell, one of Harvard's longest-serving and most controversial presidents; and Amy Lowell, the twentieth century poet who lived openly in a Boston Marriage with the actress Ada Dwyer Russell.

The Lowells realized the promise of America as the land of opportunity by uniting Puritan values of hard work, community service, and individual responsibility with a deep-seated optimism that became a well-known family trait. Long before the Kennedys put their stamp on Massachusetts, the Lowells claimed the bedrock.

CONTENTS


Dramatis Personae
Prelude: Writing a Family's History

Part One: Migration
1. 1638-1639
2. 1639 16
3. 1639-1665

Part Two: Religion
4. 1724-1738
5. 1740-1754
6. 1755-1759

Part Three: Revolution
7. 1765-1774
8. 1774-1777
9. 1778-1789

Part Four: Acquisition
10. 1796-1802
11. 1802-1812
12. 1812-1817
13. 1817-1829
14. 1829-1840

Part Five: War
15. 1842
16. 1842-1850
17. 1850-1853
18. 1853-1861
19. 1861-1864

Part Six: Reinvention
20. June 9, 1888
21. 1891-1897
22. 1897-1900
23. 1901-1913
24. 1913-1917
25. 1917-1919
26. 1919-1922

Afterword
Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index