John Witt Randall (November 6, 1813 – January 25, 1892)[1][2][3] was a minor poet and consulting zoologist to the United States Exploring Expedition but is best known for the collection of drawings and engravings that he bequeathed to Harvard University.

The success of his medical practice allowed him to buy his siblings' interest in the property, after which "he built a new and more comfortable dwelling-house near the site of the original homestead, which had fallen into decay; and it became a cherished summer resort for him and his family.

Thomas Cushing, a contemporary who attended both schools with Randall, wrote that "his peculiar and marked originality of character is well remembered [by his classmates].

Cushing recalled how Randall formed an interest in natural science while at Harvard, noting, "His tastes developed in a scientific direction, entomology being the branch to which he devoted himself.

The college at that time did little to encourage such pursuits, but he pursued the even tenor of his way till he had made a very fine collection of insects, and extensive and thorough knowledge on that and kindred subjects, while his taste for poetry and the belles-lettres was also highly cultivated".

According to Abbot, after Randall's father died in 1843, "the son lived on, educated for a professional career he abhorred, diverted from the scientific and literary career he desired, and driven into a seclusion from the world which his early companions beheld in dull, uncomprehending wonder.”[12] Randall inherited his father's estate and thenceforth, wrote Abbot, "passed his life in leisure and retirement from the world," nurturing his family's property on behalf of his mother and sisters, expanding and developing the house and grounds at Stow, and indulging his taste for literature and the fine arts.

Between 1843 and the outbreak of the Civil War, he accumulated a collection of some 575 drawings and 15,000 etchings and engravings, intending to illustrate the whole history of the art.

In an autobiographical sketch written in 1884 for the 50th anniversary of his Harvard class, Randall summarized his literary accomplishments: As to my literary works, — if I except scientific papers on subjects long ago abandoned, [such] as one on Crustacea in the Transactions of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia; two on insects in the Transactions of the Boston Society of Natural History; one manuscript volume on the animals and plants of Maine...; Critical notes on Etchers and Engravers, one volume; classification of ditto, one volume, both in manuscript incomplete and not likely to be completed, together with essays and reviews not likely to be published, — my doings reduce themselves to six volumes of poetic works, the first of which was issued in 1856, and reviewed shortly after in the North American, while the others, nearly or partially completed at the outbreak of the civil war, still lie unfinished among the many wrecks of Time, painful to many of us to look back upon, or reflect themselves upon a Future whose skies are as yet obscure.

By his own ability and indomitable energy, he multiplied the comfortable family inheritance into a great fortune, ten times as large as he found it.

From the period of the Civil War, he almost wholly ceased to increase his invaluable art collections, or to take much interest in the writing of poetry...in the winters, I found him, when I entered his study, bending grimly over a vast mass of maps, railroad reports, statistical tables, and business documents of all sorts.