FOWLER, Orin, clergyman, born in Lebanon, Connecticut, 29 July 1791; died in Washington, D. C., 3 September 1852. He was graduated at Yale in 1815, studied theology under President Dwight, taught in the academy in Fairfield, Connecticut, for a year, was licensed to preach on 14 October 1817, made a missionary tour in the Mississippi valley in 1818, and in 1819 was settled over a Congregational Church in Plainfield, Conn. He was dismissed by this society in 1831, but was immediately called to a Church in Fall River, of which he remained pastor until he entered congress. In 1841 he delivered three discourses containing a history of Fall River since 1620, and an account of the boundary dispute between Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

He was appointed by a committee of citizens to defend the interests of the town before the boundary commissioners, published a series of articles on the subject in the Boston "Atlas," and was elected in 1847 to t, he state senate, where he secured the rejection of the decision of the boundary commission by a unanimous vote. His constituents were so pleased with his ability as a legislator that they elected him in 1848 as a Free-soil Whig to the National House of Representatives, and reelected him for the following term. He was an advocate of temperance laws, and a strong opponent of slavery. In March 1850. he replied to Daniel Webster's speech in justification of the fugitive slave law. He was the author of a "Disquisition on the Evils attending the Use of Tobacco" (1833), and "Lectures on the Mode and Subjects of Baptism" (1835). His " History of Fall River, with notices of Freeborn and Tiverton," was republished in 1862 (Fall River).