The history of Lowell, Massachusetts, is closely tied to its location along the Pawtucket Falls of the Merrimack River, from being an important fishing ground for the Pennacook tribe to providing water power for the factories that formed the basis of the city's economy for a century. The city of Lowell was started in the 1820s as a money-making venture and social project referred to as "The Lowell Experiment", and quickly became the United States' largest textile center. However, within approximately a century, the decline and collapse of that industry in New England placed the city into a deep recession. Lowell's "rebirth", partially tied to Lowell National Historical Park, has made it a model for other former industrial towns, although the city continues to struggle with deindustrialization and suburbanization.
Lowell is considered the "Cradle of the American Industrial Revolution", as it was the first large-scale factory town in the United States.
Pre-colonial history and founding
The area around what is now Lowell was an important hub for the Pennacook Indians. The land above the Pawtucket Falls on the northern bank of the Merrimack was inhabited by the Pawtucket group, while the land along both sides of the Concord River was inhabited by the Wamesits. The site of Lowell itself (and a portion of Dracut) served as the location of both the Pawtucket and Wamesit capitals, primarily due to the availability of salmon at Pawtucket Falls and the transportation system provided by the local network of rivers. At the time that the colonists first substantively encountered the tribes, Daniel Gookin that they had a combined population of 12,000, with 3,000 living in the capital.
The first interactions between the colonists and the Pawtucket group occurred through trade and religious conversion. During the 1640s, Major Simon Willard traded extensively with the tribes, and in 1647 was accompanied in his expedition by the noted preacher John Eliot. Eliot returned a year later, and quickly founded a church there with a native convert named Samuel as the pastor. A dedicated church building was built in 1653, remaining until 1824, when it was demolished. Colonists began to move closer to the native tribes with the founding of Chelmsford in 1653. Subsequent grants of land extended the town to cover most of the territory Lowell now occupies, with the exception of 500 acres of farmland reserved for the Pawtucket. The colonists began actively buying land from the Pawtucket, trading those 500 acres for the island of Wickassee above the Pawtucket Falls, and the hysteria generated by King Philip's War weakened both the tribe and its relations with the colonists.
By the time the war ended in 1676, the community was much reduced. Wannalancit, the son of Passaconaway and the Pawtucket leader after his father's retirement, took the surviving tribesmen and moved to Wickassee before selling the land in 1686. The tribe moved to Canada, wandering with the Abenaki before briefly returning in 1692 to negotiate with tribes on behalf of Chelmsford during King William's War. The final parts of Pawtucket territory were finally purchased in the early 18th century, with a deed issued in 1714 removing their last legal claim and the annexation of "Indian town" in 1726. With that, what is now Lowell became entirely colonist-owned, existing as part of the towns of Chelmsford and Dracut.
Early industrialization
Entrepreneurs and industrialists soon began using Chelmsford as a location for new mills and manufacturing plants. The presence of Pawtucket Falls offered a source of water power that enabled the construction of a sawmill and gristmill in the early 18th century, followed by a fulling mill in 1737. The region's forests made it an attractive area for logging, but necessitated a way of shipping lumber down the river. The Pawtucket Falls made this difficult, as they included a 32-foot drop. In 1792, the Proprietors of Locks and Canals association was formed, and completed a canal to bypass Pawtucket Falls in 1797. This would allow the shipping of lumber and other products to the shipyards at Newburyport. Unfortunately the creation of the Middlesex Canal, which formed a direct route to Boston, severely harmed the Pawtucket Canal's prospects, and it swiftly fell into disuse.
Francis Cabot Lowell, an American businessman and textile merchant, visited Britain in 1810 to investigate their textile machinery. Because British law prohibited the export of the machines, Lowell instead memorized the designs, and on his return helped build a replica. In 1813 he organised the Boston Manufacturing Company and created a cotton mill in Waltham, Massachusetts. This mill was the first one in America to use power looms, and proved so successful that Patrick Jackson (Lowell's successor after his death in 1817) saw a need to open a new plant. Waltham had been chosen due to the power provided by the Charles River, and Jackson chose to use Pawtucket Falls to power the second plant. The creation of the canal did, however, provide Chelmsford with a convenient source of water for manufacturing purposes; a series of small cotton and gunpowder manufacturing businesses sprung up, using the canal as a water power source.
Jackson and others founded the Merrimack Manufacturing Company to open a mill by Pawtucket Falls, breaking ground in 1822 and completing the first run of cotton in 1823. Within two years a need for more mills and machinery became evident, and a series of new canals were dug, allowing for even more manufacturing plants. With a growing population and booming economy, Lowell was finally spun off from Chelmsford. Named after Francis Cabot Lowell, it was officially chartered on March 1, 1826, with a population of 2,500. Within a decade the population jumped from 2,500 to 18,000, and on April 1, 1836, the town of Lowell officially received a charter as a city, granted by the Massachusetts General Court.
City of Lowell
Lowell was only the third Massachusetts community to be granted city government, after Boston and Salem. The population at the time was 17,633, and soon, a court, jail, hospital, cemetery, library, and two town commons were established. The first museums and theatres opened around 1840. Lowell also began annexing neighboring areas, including Belvidere from Tewksbury in 1834, and Centralville from Dracut in 1851. Daniel Ayer started the satellite city of Ayer's City in South Lowell in 1847, and in 1874, Pawtucketville and Middlesex Village were annexed from Dracut and Chelmsford respectively, bringing the city close to its present borders.
By 1850, Lowell's population was 33,000, making it the second largest city in Massachusetts and America's largest industrial center. The 5.6 mile long canal system produced 10,000 horsepower, being provided to ten corporations with a total of forty mills. Ten thousand workers used an equal number of looms fed by 320,000 spindles. The mills were producing 50,000 miles of cloth annually. Other industries developed in Lowell as well: The Lowell Machine Shop and Father John's Medicine opened. Tanneries, a bleachery, and service companies needed by the growing city were established. Moxie, an early soft drink, was invented in Lowell in the 1870s. Around 1880, Lowell became the first city in America to have telephone numbers.
Lowell continued to be in the forefront of new industrial technology. In 1828, Paul Moody developed an early belt-driven power transfer system to supersede the unreliable gearwork that was utilized at the time. In 1830, Patrick Tracy Jackson commissioned work on the Boston and Lowell Railroad, one of the Oldest railroads in North America. It opened five years became independent in 1845, patent medicine factories like Hood's Sarsaparilla Laboratory later, making the Middlesex Canal obsolete. Soon, lines up the Merrimack to Nashua, downriver to Lawrence, and inland to Groton Junction, today known as Ayer (renamed after Lowell patent medicine tycoon Dr. James Cook Ayer), were constructed.
Uriah A. Boyden installed his first turbine in the Appleton Mill in 1844,Appleton's Dictionary of Machines, Mechanics, Enginework, and Engineering, Volume 2 (Google eBook) D. Appleton & Company, 1869 Page 882 which was a major efficiency improvement over the old-fashioned waterwheel. The turbine was improved at Lowell again shortly thereafter by Englishman James B. Francis, chief engineer of Proprietors of Locks and Canals. Francis had begun his career with Locks and Canals working under George Washington Whistler, the father of painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and his improved turbine, known as the Francis Turbine, is still used with few changes today.
Francis also designed the Francis Gate, a flood control mechanism that provides a means of sealing the canal system off from the Merrimack River, and completed the canal system by adding the Northern Canal and Moody Street Feeder, both designed to improve efficiency to the entire system. To further improve the amount of year-round, day and night water power Lowell needed, Francis, along with engineers from Lawrence, were involved with The Lake Company, a corporation involved in building dams in the Lakes Region of Central New Hampshire. These dams, constructed and improved mid-century, allowed the cities on the Merrimack River to store and release water from the Merrimack's source, including Lake Winnipesaukee.
In the late 19th century, new technologies changed Lowell. The electric streetcar allowed the city to expand creating new neighborhoods on the outskirts. Tyler Park and Lynde Hill in Belvidere were home to many of Lowell's wealthiest residents, who could now live away from the noisy and polluted downtown industrial area. The prosperous city built a massive new Romanesque city hall made of granite with a clock tower that could be seen from the mill-yards. A new library with a hall dedicated to the Civil War, a post office, and ornate commercial buildings replaced the puritanical mid-century structures.
Steam power was first used to supplement the fully developed hydropower sources in Lowell in the 1860s, and by the mid-1870s, it was the dominant energy source. Electricity allowed the mills to run on hydroelectricity, instead of direct-drive hydropower. These improvements allowed Lowell to continue increasing its industrial output with a lesser increase in the number of workers. However, the move away from pure hydropower was leading to Lowell being eclipsed by cities with better locations for the new power sources. For example, in the 50 years after the Civil War, Fall River, Massachusetts and New Bedford, Massachusetts both became larger factory towns than Lowell based on output. The reason was largely because their seaport locations made the importation and exportation of goods and materials, and particularly coal, more economical than the considerably inland, and therefore only accessible by train, Lowell. By 1920, it was being seriously suggested that the Merrimack be dredged from Newburyport to Lowell so that barges could access the city.Frederick Coburn, History of Lowell and its People V1 However, the events of the 1920s ensured that would never happen.
In 1885 was founded the Lowell Co-operative Bank, today Sage Bank, one of the oldest still functioning banks in Massachusetts.
Immigration