| Notes |
- Burke's American Families With British Ancestry
Genealogical Pub Co, Baltimore, 1983, p. 2796.
Seth Low (twice mayor of Brooklyn 1881, 1885; b. 1-18-1850; married 12-9-1880 to Annie Wroe Scollay, dau. of the Hon. Benjamin Robbins Curtis; and died 9-17-1916
Dictionary of American Biography Vol VI,
Larned-Millington, Charles Scribner's Sons, NY 1933, p. 449-450.~
Seth Low (Jan.18, 1850 - Sept. 17, 1916), merchant, college president, youngest child of Abiel Abbot Low by his first wife, Ellen Almira (Dow) Low, was named after his paternal grandfather, who had left Massachusetts, where the Lows had dwelt from the seventeenth century, and moved to Brooklyn in 1829, setting himself up as a merchant. In his youth Low enjoyed the advantages of extensive travel, was educated in a private school, and completed his secondary studies at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. He entered Columbia College with the class of 1870, earning the encomium of President Barnard, as "the first scholar in college and the most manly young fellow we have had here in many a year" (B. R. C. Low, Seth Low, p. 41). Reared in a home on Brooklyn Heights overlooking the New York harbor, he early acquired an enthusiasm for maritime trade evoked by the sight of his father's famous clipper ships. At the end of his senior year at Columbia, yielding to his father's wishes, he terminated a year's study of law and entered the establishment of A. A. Low & Brothers. He was employed in his father's warehouse from 1870 to 1875 and became a member of the firm a year later, supervising importations of raw silk from China, Japan, and France. On the retirement of the senior members four years later he succeeded with other junior partners to the business which was finally liquidated in 1887. On Dec. 9, 1880, he married Anne Wroe Scollay Curtis of Boston, the daughter of Justice Benjamin R. Curtis of the United States Supreme Court.
Low's efforts in behalf of civic reform were first enlisted in charitable work. In 1878 he organized and became the first president of the Bureau of Charities of Brooklyn. He first attained political prominence as president of a Republican Campaign Club organized in Brooklyn in 1880 to promote the election of Garfield and Arthur. The club, reorganized under the title of "The Young Republican Club," addressed itself to municipal reform and advocated the complete separation of local and national politics. The mayoralty contest of 1881, the first under Brooklyn's new charter, was warmly contested. The Republican party was divided in allegiance between two contestants, Gen. Benjamin F. Tracy and Ripley Ropes. The former, in the interest of party unity, suggested that both candidates withdraw in favor of Low, who was then nominated and elected mayor of Brooklyn by a fair majority. He was renominated in the autumn of 1883 and reelected by a close margin of votes in a hotly contested campaign against the Democratic nominee, Joseph C. Hendrix. A feature of his administration was the introduction of the merit system in the municipal service of Brooklyn, a reduction of the city debt, and a complete reform of the public-school system (Fourth Annual Message of Hon. Seth Low, Mayor of Brooklyn, 1885; World, New York, Sept 2, 1897). Low, ever a stanch friend of civil service, stood for the separation of local and national politics and refused to use the patronage of the city for any party in the presidential campaign or in any other election. In refusing to support the candidacy of James G. Blaine in 1884, he maintained: "I am not a Republican mayor, as vou say I am. I am Mayor of the whole people of Brooklyn" (Seth Low, p. 53). Casting his vote for Cleveland, Low never again received the whole-hearted support of the Republican organization.
In 1889, shortly after his retirement from active business, Low received a call to the presidency of Columbia College. He was not quite forty years of age when he accepted the office. His selection was symbolic of a new day, when the university administrator would not be a clergy man nor a professional scholar, but a broad-visioned executive. It was in the latter capacity that he was to render notable service to Columbia. At the beginning of his administration, which covered the years 1890-1901, he centralized graduate organization and established the University Council. Graduate and professional instruction was reorganized and widened considerably in scope. Teachers' College, Barnard, and the College of Physicians and Surgeons, among other institutions, were brought into association with the university. The most forward-looking step taken through his initiative was the purchase of the new site on Morningside Heights in 1892. Low made himself responsible for a library building on the new site which he contributed as a memorial to his father. In addition he established a number of trust funds for the encouragement of study and research (A History of Columbia University, 1754 - 1904, 1904, pp. 154 -71).
Low's activities as president of Columbia did ir not preclude his participation in public affairs during this decade. He served on the board of the Rapid Transit Commission and assisted in it drafting the charter for Greater New York. He a was frequently selected to act as arbiter in labor disputes and aided generously in relief work, especially during the cholera epidemic of 1893. In 1899 he went as a delegate to the first Hague Conference. In 1897 he was nominated by the Citizens' Union for the first mayor of Greater New York. As in his vigorous Brooklyn campaigns, his keynote was the complete separation of municipal and national politics (Seth Louis Great Speech at Cooper Union, Oct. 6, 1897, 1897, pp. 3, 8). The failure of the Republican party to support him, coupled with the death of Henry George toward the end of the campaign, brought about his defeat by Robert Van Wyck of Tammany Hall. Low ran second, 50,000 votes ahead of Benjamin F. Tracy, Republican. In 1901, however, he was elected to the mayoralty of New York by a large majority on a reaction of public sentiment against the Tammany regime. His administration was distinguished as a brief era of civic reform. Patronage was checked and the civil service was developed. Through his efforts the first subway to Brooklyn and the Pennsylvania tunnel to Long Island were planned and the electrification of the New York Central within the city limits was effected. Notwithstanding this excellent record, he failed of reelection in 1903.
From leadership in civic affairs Low turned to the farmer's cooperative movement, laying out a home and farm at Bedford Hills in Westchester county, N. Y., and organizing the Bedford Farmers' Cooperative Association. He firmly believed that the two major problems which America must solve were the negro and labor. In 1905 he became a member of the board of trustees of the Tuskegee Institute and two years later was elected chairman of the board, a position which he held until his death. During this period he actively cooperated with Booker T. Washington. In the last decade of his life, he devoted much of his time to securing more harmonious relations between capital and labor. In 1907 he became president of the National Civic Federation, and in the autumn of 1914 he was appointed by President Wilson a member of the Colorado Coal Commission for the investigation of labor difficulties in that state. In 1914, after a long membership in the New York Chamber of Commerce, he was elected president of that body. His service to the organization was as notable as that of his father as its president during the Civil War. His administration is associated with the organization of a committee on problems of shipments, the organization at Washington of the Bureau of War Risk Insurance, and with the movement for the rehabilitation of American shipping. His last important public service was rendered as chairman of the committee on cities of the New York constitutional convention of 1915, a position to which he was justly entitled. He had gained international recognition as an advocate of municipal self government and executive responsibility, ideas which he elaborated upon at Lord Bryce's invitation in a chapter which he wrote for the first edition of The American Commonwealth, and in his Addresses and Papers on Municipal Government (1891).
In later years Low was portly in physical appearance; in manner, kindly and benevolent, but in public somewhat shy and reserved. He possessed a talent for merging himself in a cause and an unfailing acumen in the selection of experts. He was universally respected as the pattern of the scholar in politics. In religion he was an active Episcopalian. His death occurred at his home in Bedford Hills after a lingering illness.
[Benjamin R. C. Low, Seth Low (1925); Columbia Alumni News, Oct. 20, 1916; Board of Estimate and Apportionment and Board of Aldermen: Joint Session in Memory of Honorable Seth Low. Sept. 25, 1916 (1916); A. L. Moffat, "Low Geneal.: The Descendants of Seth Low and Mary Porter" (1932), a copy of vhich is in the Lib. of Cong.; and the New York press of Sept. 18, 1916.]
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1850 - 1916 (66 years)
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