Samuel R. Lowery

Samuel R. Lowery (December 9, 1830 or 1832 c. 1900) was an American preacher and lawyer. In 1880, he was admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court upon the motion of Belva Ann Lockwood.

Early life Samuel R. Lowery was born December 9, 1830 or 1832 near Nashville, Tennessee. His father, Peter, was an African American slave and his mother was a Cherokee Indian. His mother died when Samuel was eight years old. Lowery worked at Franklin College and studied under the Christian preacher, Tolbert Fanning. At sixteen he taught in school for four years. Samuel also converted and began preaching. In 1857, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and continued preaching there. In 1858 he married where he remained for three years before returning to the US and moving to a farm given to him by his father near West Lancaster in Fayette County, Ohio. He also began studying law.

The school began to struggle in 1872, with reasons given including financial improprieties

Lowery moved back to Nashville, where he was admitted to the bar and began practicing law. In 1875, he moved to Huntsville, Alabama. Lowery was sponsored to the Supreme Court Bar by Belva Ann Lockwood, the first woman admitted to the bar, Lowery has been wrongly claimed as the fifth Black attorney admitted to the Supreme Court Bar and first to argue a case before that court, despite never arguing any cases before the Supreme Court. The first Black attorney to argue before the Supreme Court was instead Everett J. Waring in Jones v. United States (1890).

Silk cultivation and industry

About 1874, his ten-year-old daughter, Annie L. Lowery, attended an exhibition of silkworms by Lewis Theobald and persuaded her father to buy some silkworm eggs. Annie began to raise silkworms on white mulberry trees at their home in Huntsville. Annie died in 1877, and Samuel continued her work. He met with other major silk manufacturers in the United States, including Frank Cheney, brother of Ward Cheney and John Kyle of Paterson, New Jersey. In 1875, Lowery established the Lowery Industrial Academy, and later founded the S. R. and R. M. Lowery Industrial Silk Culture and Manufacturing Company.

In 1879, Lowery was the editor of a newspaper, the National Freeman, in Huntsville. In 1880 he established a cooperative community in Jefferson County, Alabama called Loweryvale. In August 1900, Lowery traveled to Boston for the meetings led by Booker T. Washington which founded the National Negro Business League. Lowery died around that year, and his silk farm continued at least until November 1902.