Charles Cowley

Charles Cowley was an English-born American attorney and author who resided in Lowell, Massachusetts. Charles Cowley was a native of England, born in Eastington, Gloucestershire on January 9, 1832. He was the son of Aaron Cowley and Hannah Price. He came to America with his family in 1842 and settled in Lowell, Massachusetts where his father worked in the textile industry. He was educated with a mix of public schools and private tutors. Cowley worked for the Lowell Daily Courier, a Whig newspaper, before he was twenty-one years old and was called the “boy editor” due to his age. He left the paper in 1854 after an attack of typhoid fever and began to study law upon his recovery. While studying law under Josiah Abbott and Samuel Brown, he wrote his first history of Lowell, Massachusetts. The book was entitled A Hand Book of Business in Lowell, with a History of the City and was published in 1856. He was admitted to the Bar for the state of Massachusetts the same year.