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The Merrimack Manufacturing Company (also known as Merrimack Mills) was the first of the major textile manufacturing concerns to open in Lowell, Massachusetts, beginning operations in 1823. [1]
After the death of Francis Cabot Lowell of the Boston Manufacturing Company, his associates (commonly referred to as the Boston Associates) began planning a larger operation in East Chelmsford, Massachusetts, along the Merrimack River. The Merrimack Manufacturing Company, modeled after the second Boston Manufacturing Company mill, was built concurrently with the necessary canals, machine shop, dyehouse, and boardinghouses for the operatives. The system of operation the company employed became known as the Lowell System. Initially capitalized with $600,000, [2] its typical product was calico cloth. Situated at the foot of the Merrimack Canal, the original mills received the full 32' drop of the river. Closely associated with the Proprietors of Locks and Canals and at one point, merged with the company under the same agents (such as Kirk Boott), the Merrimack Company was the "parent" company of the later Lowell firms - although they were technically competitors. The Merrimack Company also was very powerful in the politics of the settlement, later town, and later city, of Lowell.
However, as textile production in the United States shifted away from New England, the Merrimack Manufacturing Company's fortunes reversed. The company was able to survive the Great Depression due to military contracts and awards which revamped the surrounding economy; it was among the last of Lowell's textile giants to close. Shortly after it ceased operations in the late 1950s, nearly the entire complex was demolished for urban renewal in 1960. [3] A few years later, many of the boardinghouses were destroyed as well. Today, the site is occupied by new arterial roads, parking lots, a few low-rise office buildings, and a high-rise housing tower, as well as the newer buildings of Lowell High School.
From 1900 until 1946, the Merrimack Manufacturing Company ran a plant in Huntsville, Alabama as well. [4]
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Lawrence is a city located in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States, on the Merrimack River. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 89,143. Surrounding communities include Methuen to the north, Andover to the southwest, and North Andover to the east. Lawrence and Salem were the county seats of Essex County, until the Commonwealth abolished county government in 1999. Lawrence is part of the Merrimack Valley.
Lowell is a city in Massachusetts, in the United States. Alongside Cambridge, It is one of two traditional seats of Middlesex County. With an estimated population of 115,554 in 2020, it was the fifth most populous city in Massachusetts as of the last census, and the third most populous in the Boston metropolitan statistical area. The city also is part of a smaller Massachusetts statistical area, called Greater Lowell, and of New England's Merrimack Valley region.
Lowell National Historical Park is a National Historical Park of the United States located in Lowell, Massachusetts. Established in 1978 a few years after Lowell Heritage State Park, it is operated by the National Park Service and comprises a group of different sites in and around the city of Lowell related to the era of textile manufacturing in the city during the Industrial Revolution. In 2019, the park was included as Massachusetts' representative in the America the Beautiful Quarters series.
Francis Cabot Lowell was an American businessman for whom the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, is named. He was instrumental in bringing the Industrial Revolution to the United States.
Paul Moody was a U.S. textile machinery inventor born in Byfield, Massachusetts. He is often credited with developing and perfecting the first power loom in America, which launched the first successful integrated cotton mill at Waltham, Massachusetts in 1814, under the leadership of Francis Cabot Lowell and his associates.
The Middlesex Canal was a 27-mile (44-kilometer) barge canal connecting the Merrimack River with the port of Boston. When operational it was 30 feet wide, and 3 feet deep, with 20 locks, each 80 feet long and between 10 and 11 feet wide. It also had eight aqueducts.
Completed in 1796, the Pawtucket Canal was originally built as a transportation canal to circumvent the Pawtucket Falls of the Merrimack River in East Chelmsford, Massachusetts. In the early 1820s it became a major component of the Lowell power canal system. with the founding of the textile industry at what became Lowell.
The Waltham-Lowell system was a labor and production model employed during the rise of the textile industry in the United States, particularly in New England, amid the larger backdrop of rapid expansion of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century.
Lowell High School is a single-campus public high school located in downtown Lowell, Massachusetts, United States. The school is a part of Lowell Public Schools. The mascot is the Red Raider and the colors are maroon & gray. Current enrollment is over 3,000 students.
The Nashua Manufacturing Company was a cotton textile manufacturer in Nashua, New Hampshire that operated from 1823 to 1945. It was one of several textile companies that helped create what became the city of Nashua, creating roads, churches and its own bank as part of the process. Like most New England textile mills it struggled during the Depression. It shut after World War II, when much of the industry had moved South for cheaper labor and land.
The Boston Manufacturing Company was a business that operated one of the first factories in America. It was organized in 1813 by Francis Cabot Lowell, a wealthy Boston merchant, in partnership with a group of investors later known as The Boston Associates, for the manufacture of cotton textiles. It built the first integrated spinning and weaving factory in the world at Waltham, Massachusetts, using water power. They used plans for a power loom that he smuggled out of England as well as trade secrets from the earlier horse-powered Beverly Cotton Manufactory, of Beverly, Massachusetts, of 1788. This was the largest factory in the U.S., with a workforce of about 300. It was a very efficient, highly profitable mill that, with the aid of the Tariff of 1816, competed effectively with British textiles at a time when many smaller operations were being forced out of business. While the Rhode Island System that followed was famously employed by Samuel Slater, the Boston Associates improved upon it with the "Waltham System". The idea was successfully copied at Lowell, Massachusetts, and elsewhere in New England. Many rural towns now had their own textile mills.
Patrick Tracy Jackson was an American manufacturer, one of the founders of the Boston Manufacturing Company of Waltham, Massachusetts, and later a founder of the Merrimack Manufacturing Company, whose developments formed the nucleus of Lowell, Massachusetts.
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.
Kirk Boott was an American Industrialist instrumental in the early history of Lowell, Massachusetts.
The Proprietors of Locks and Canals on Merrimack River is a limited liability corporation founded on June 27, 1792, making it one of the oldest corporations in the United States. Its named incorporators were Dudley Atkins Tyng, William Coombs, Joseph Tyler, Nicholas Johnson, and Joshua Carter.
Mill Conversion or mill rehab is a form of adaptive reuse in which a historic mill or industrial factory building is restored or rehabilitated into another use, such as residential housing, retail shops, office, or a mix of these non-industrial elements (mixed-use).
The Boott Mills in Lowell, Massachusetts were a part of an extensive group of cotton mills, built in 1835 alongside a power canal system in this important cotton town. Their founder was Kirk Boott, one of the early mill owners in Lowell. Today, the Boott Mills complex is the most intact in Lowell and is part of Lowell National Historical Park. It houses the Boott Cotton Mills Museum.
The Great Stone Dam was built between 1845 and 1848 on the site of Bodwell's Falls on the Merrimack River in what became Lawrence, Massachusetts. The dam has a length of 900 feet (270 m) and a height of 35 feet (11 m).
The Merrimack Valley is a bi-state region along the Merrimack River in the U.S. states of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The Merrimack is one of the larger waterways in New England and has helped to define the livelihood and culture of those living along it for millennia.
The Saco-Lowell Shops was once one of the largest textile machine manufacturers in the United States. It was formed in 1912 with a merger between the Lowell Machine Shop with the Saco-Pettee Machine Company. At its peak in the 1920s, the company had manufacturing facilities in Lowell and Newton, Massachusetts, and Biddeford, Maine. The company maintained their executive office at 77 Franklin Street in Boston, and also had a southern office in Charlotte, North Carolina.