J. A. W. Lowry

John Augustus Way Lowry, Jr. (January 12, 1848 – May 20, 1899), was a lawyer and Democratic politician from his native Bossier Parish in northwestern Louisiana.^[1]

Lowry was related to Governor Robert Lowry of Mississippi, who served from 1882 to 1890; the degree of kinship is not available. Born in rural Bellevue, once the seat of government of Bossier Parish, Lowry was the youngest of six children of J. A. W. Lowry, Sr. (1813-1847), and the former Sarah Alzenith Miles (1817-1878), a native of Woodville in Wilkinson County in southwestern Mississippi. He was born two weeks after the death of his father.^[2] He studied at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and taught school for a time before undertaking the private study of law. In 1875, the Louisiana Supreme Court admitted him to the bar.^[1]

During the 1880s, he was the district attorney for the 2nd Judicial District (since the 26th District) for Bossier and neighboring Webster parishes.^[1] In 1896, he was elected to succeed G. L. P. Wren of Minden as a member of the Louisiana State Senate for Bienville, Bossier, Claiborne, and Webster parishes. He served alongside Thomas Wafer Fuller, a journalist from Minden who was later the Webster Parish school superintendent. When his successor, E. S. Dortch, took office in 1900, nearly a year after Lowry's death, the district was reduced to Bossier and Webster parishes, which had since been the configuration^[3] until 1992, when Bienville Parish and a section of Claiborne Parish were added to the district. For a brief time too Red River Parish was in Senate District 36.^[3]

Though he is often called "Judge", it is unclear when he sat on the bench or which level of court on which he served. His judicial service would have been no more than five years and in the first half of the 1890s, after the publication in 1890 of his life story in The Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northwest Louisiana. Lowry is interred at Bellevue Cemetery in Bossier Parish, along with his mother, wife, Elizabeth Eubank Lowry (1857-1927);^[1] sister, Martha Elizabeth "Pattie" Lowry Cade (1843-1913),^[4] and namesake nephew, John Augustus Cade (1878-1900), who died of a fever in Bossier Parish at the age of twenty-two.^[5]

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