Isaac Low

Low was born on April 13, 1735, at Raritan Landing in Piscataway, Province of New Jersey.{{cite web |title=LOW, Isaac - Biographical Information |url=https://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=L000470 |website=bioguide.congress.gov |publisher=Biographical Directory of the United States Congress |access-date=20 June 2018}} He was the son of Cornelius Low Jr. and Johanna (née Gouverneur) Low and the brother of Nicholas Low.{{cite book |last1=Ingham |first1=John N. |title=Biographical Dictionary of American Business Leaders |date=1983 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |isbn=9780313213625 |page=826 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qzxy3pejsdoC&pg=PA826 |access-date=20 June 2018 |language=en}}{{cite web |title=Nicholas Low papers, 1773-1897 |url=https://www.loc.gov/item/mm81030627/ |website=www.loc.gov |publisher=The Library of Congress |access-date=20 June 2018 |language=en}} His father was a well-established merchant and shipper who built the Cornelius Low House, an extant 1741 Georgian mansion, and brought prominence to the community of Raritan Landing.{{cite web |url=http://co.middlesex.nj.us/culturalheritage/museum.asp |title=Cornelius Low House / Middlesex County Museum |access-date=2008-10-16 |quote=Cornelius Low was a leading citizen of Raritan Landing, a port community on the Raritan River in central New Jersey that flourished between 1720 and 1835. |publisher=Middlesex County, New Jersey |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081016042835/http://www.co.middlesex.nj.us/culturalheritage/museum.asp |archive-date=2008-10-16 |url-status=dead }} Low's family was descended from German, Dutch and French Huguenot settlers.

Low served as a tax commissioner for the New York provincial government during the French and Indian War. Low was a prominent merchant in New York City, with various firms including Lott & Low. He had large real estate holdings, built up sizable trade, and had interests in a slitting mill.{{cite book |last1=Harrington |first1=Virginia Draper |title=The New York Merchant on the Eve of the Revolution |date=1935 |publisher=Columbia University Press |pages=132, 339, 349 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Iv8NAQAAIAAJ |access-date=20 June 2018 |language=en}} Low was chosen as a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress in 1763. Although he accumulated a fortune that placed him in the upper ranks of colonial New York's merchant leaders, he was "nowhere near its absolute pinnacle."{{cite book |title=Low, Isaac (1735-1791), merchant, early revolutionary leader, and later prominent Loyalist {{!}} American National Biography |url=https://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-0100540 |website=www.anb.org | year=2000 |publisher=Oxford University Press | doi=10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.0100540 | isbn=978-0-19-860669-7 |access-date=20 June 2018 |language=en| last1=Countryman | first1=Edward }}

He was an active speaker against taxation without representation and the chairman of New York City's Committee of Correspondence in 1765.{{Citation needed|date=December 2020}} He became chairman of New York City's Committee of Sixty in 1774. Low was named one of nine delegates from New York to the First Continental Congress in 1774{{refn|group=lower-alpha|Low was appointed to the First Continental Congress by the Committee of Fifty-one of the City and County of New York and authorized by the counties of Albany, Duchess, and Westchester.{{cite book| url = http://mrsoloughlin.weebly.com/| title = Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789| editor = Worthington C. Ford, Library of Congress (United States)| page = 101| date = 1774| access-date = February 7, 2010|display-editors=etal}}}} and to New York Provincial Congress the following year where he pursued a moderate approach towards the British.{{cite book |last1=Wilson |first1=James Grant |title=The Memorial History of the City of New-York: From Its First Settlement to the Year 1892 |date=1893 |publisher=New York History Company |page=[https://archive.org/details/memorialhistory00wilsgoog/page/n516 516] |url=https://archive.org/details/memorialhistory00wilsgoog |access-date=20 June 2018 |language=en}} In 1775, he was a founder and the first president of the New York Chamber of Commerce.Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, edited by James Grant Wilson, John Fiske and Stanley L. Klos. Six volumes, New York: D. Appleton and Company (1887–1889); published on the Web by StanKlos.com (1999).

Opposed to armed conflict with the British Crown, Low quit the Patriot cause after the Declaration of Independence was announced in 1776 and relocated to New Jersey, where he was imprisoned on suspicion of treason by the New Jersey Convention. He was eventually released after George Washington intervened, but after collaboration with the British occupation forces in New York, his property was confiscated after the New York assembly passed a motion of attainder in 1779. Four years later, Low emigrated to England where he died in 1791.

Low married Margarita Cuyler (1738–1802) in 1760, a scion of the powerful Schuyler and Van Cortlandt families.{{cite book |title=The Illustrated American |date=1890 |publisher=Illustrated American Publishing Company |page=414 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CRhLAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA414 |access-date=20 June 2018 |language=en}} Both her father, Cornelis Cuyler, and brother, Abraham Cuyler, were mayors of Albany. Another brother, General Cornelius Cuyler, was a British Army officer during the French Revolutionary Wars, who served as Lt. Gov. of Portsmouth and was created a Baronet of St John's Lodge.{{Citation needed|date=December 2020}} Together, Isaac and Margarita were the parents of one child, Isaac Low Jr., who was educated in French and became a British army commissary-general.{{cite book |last1=Jasanoff |first1=Maya |title=Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World |date=2012 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |isbn=9781400075478 |page=385 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uGKsn09oVwQC&pg=PA385 |access-date=20 June 2018 |language=en}}{{cite book |title=(Thirteenth-Fourteenth) Annual Report of the Council: With The Lists of The Local Committees; Proceedings of Evening Meetings; The Laws; And A List of The Members |date=1844 |location=London |page=35 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=up1eAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA35 |access-date=20 June 2018 |language=en}}{{cite web |last1=Werther |first1=Richard J. |title=Patriots Turned Loyalist—The Experiences of Joseph Galloway and Isaac Low |url=https://allthingsliberty.com/2018/02/patriots-turned-loyalist-experiences-joseph-galloway-isaac-low/ |website=allthingsliberty.com |publisher=Journal of the American Revolution |access-date=20 June 2018 |date=21 February 2018}}

Low died in Cowes on the Isle of Wight, Great Britain, on July 25, 1791. Although a family tradition holds that his wife joined him, probate records hold that she died in Albany in 1802.{{cite web |last1=Bielinski |first1=Stephen |title=Margarita Cuyler Low |url=https://www.nysm.nysed.gov/albany/bios/c/mgtcuyler592.html |website=www.nysm.nysed.gov |publisher=New York State Museum |access-date=20 June 2018}}

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• {{CongBio|L000470}}
• [http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/guidedisplay.pl?index=L000470 LOW, Isaac (1735–1791) Guide to Research Papers]

{{Signers of the Continental Association}}

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Category:1735 births

Category:1791 deaths

Category:Members of the New York Provincial Congress

Category:Continental Congressmen from New York (state)

Category:People from Piscataway, New Jersey

Category:Tax commissioners of New York (state)

Category:Cuyler family

Category:Signers of the Continental Association

Category:Merchants from colonial New York

Category:18th-century American merchants