[2] He was a lineal descendant of John Lowthorpe, who in the thirty-seventh year of Henry VIII (1545) was a gentleman of extensive landed estates, and of Mark Lothrop, his grandson.

But waiting a year, at the advice of friends, who thought him too young to enter, circumstances thrust him into the arena of business, and he assumed the charge of a brother's drug store.

In 1850, Lothrop bought out a book store in Dover, New Hampshire, which he made one of the best and largest in New England, and it became a literary center: A favorite meeting place for the cultivated people of the town.

The Pansy, Our Little Men and Women, Babyland, the Chautauqua Young Folks' Journal and the quarterly Best Things, were other periodicals issued by his firm, and all were eminently successful.

Here was dispensed a gracious hospitality, drawing to the celebrated old mansion, guests from both sides of the ocean, men and women of high social position and reputation for intellectual gifts.

He was laid to rest in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts, on Ridge Hill, that spot so famous as the burial place of distinguished men and women.