John Howard Lawson was born on September 25, 1894 in New York City to parents originally named Simeon Levy and Belle Hart, who were Jewish. Before their first child was born, his father changed the family name from Levy to Lawson, joking that this was so that his son could "obtain reservations at expensive resort hotels". In the 18880s, Lawson’s father was living in Mexico City, where he started a newspaper, the "Mexican Financie." When John was five, his mother died. She had named her three children after people she admired: John Howard Lawson was named after prison reformer John Howard, his sister Adelaide Jaffery Lawson was named after a friend of hers who was active in social causes, and Wendell Holmes Lawson was named after reforming American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.