Lord,_John

Lord, John (1810-1894), American historical writer and lecturer, was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the 27th of December 1810. He was the nephew of Nathan Lord (1792-1870), president of Dartmouth College from 1828 to 1863. He graduated at Dartmouth in 1833, and at Andover Theological Seminary in 1837. His course at the Seminary was interrupted by a period of teaching—at Windham, Connecticut (1834), and at Norwich (1834-1835)—and by a tour in 1836 through New York and Ohio, in which he lectured on the dark ages. He was agent and lecturer for the American Peace Society (1837-1839), and for a brief time was a Congregational pastor in turn at New Marlboro and West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and at Utica, New York. About 1840 he became a professional lecturer on history. He lectured extensively for fifty years, especially in the United States and Great Britain, and introduced, with success, the mid-day lecture. He was lecturer on history in Dartmouth from 1869 to 1876. He received, in 1864, the degree of LL.D. from the University of the City of New York. From 1854 he made his home in Stamford, Connecticut, where he died on the 15th of December 1894. His works include, besides several school and college histories, The Old Roman World: the Grandeur and Failure of Civilization (1867); Ancient States and Empires (1869); Two German Giants: Frederick the Great and Bismarck (1885); and Beacon Lights of History (8 vols., 1884-1896), his chief contribution to historical literature.

See The Life of John Lord (1896) by Rev. Alexander S. Twombley, D. D. (in “Beacon Lights of History”), which is based chiefly upon Lord’s Reminiscences of Fifty Years in the Lecture Field.