Isaac Low


Isaac Low was an American merchant in New York City who served as a member of the Continental Congress and as a delegate to the New York Provincial Congress. Though originally a Patriot, he later joined the Loyalist cause in the American Revolution.

Early life

He was born on April 13, 1735 at Raritan Landing in Piscataway, Province of New Jersey. He was the son of Cornelius Low Jr. and Johanna Low and the brother of Nicholas Low.
His father was a well-established merchant and shipper who had brought prominence to the community of Raritan Landing, who built the Cornelius Low House, an extant 1741 Georgian mansion. Low's family was descended from German, Dutch and French Huguenot settlers.

Career

After serving as a tax commissioner for the New York provincial government during the French and Indian War. As a large real estate holder in the city of New York and a prominent merchant in New York City who built up sizable trade and had interests in a slitting mill, he 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."
He was an active speaker against taxation without representation and the chairman of New York City's Committee of Correspondence in 1765. 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, and to New York Provincial Congress the following year where he pursued a moderate approach towards the British. In that same year, he was a founder and the first president of the New York Chamber of Commerce.

American Revolutionary War

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.

Personal life

Low married Margarita Cuyler in 1760, a scion of the powerful Schuyler and Van Cortlandt families. 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. Together, Isaac and Margarita were the parents of one child:
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.