James J. Storrow

James Jackson Storrow II (1864–1926) was a Boston-area lawyer and investment banker instrumental in forming General Motors, and was its third president (for just two months, 1910–11). Storrow was a business partner of Henry Lee Higginson, founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He served on the Boston City Council, 1915-1918. Early and family life James J. Storrow was born in Boston on January 19, 1864, the son of prominent Boston lawyer and Episcopalian James Jackson Storrow (1837-1897) and his first wife, Anna Maria Perry (who died in 1865). He had a younger brother Samuel (born 1865, Harvard Class of '87) and elder sister Elizabeth Randolph Storrow (born 1862). He attended Harvard College, Class of '85. His grandfather, Charles Storer Storrow, was the chief engineer of the company that built the Great Stone Dam and textile mill complex in Lawrence, Massachusetts, while his great-grandfather was the celebrated naval hero Oliver Hazard Perry. Storrow met Helen Osborne, daughter of a prominent and activist upstate New York family (whose brother also attended Harvard), while attempting to scale the Matterhorn in Switzerland. They married and had only one son, James Jackson Storrow III (1892-1977), although they had hoped for a large family. Helen Storrow became a prominent international Girl Scout leader, and both became known for social activism in Boston and New England.