Here’s the seventh installment of my Twitter “tweets” of Charles Cowley’s “Illustrated History of Lowell.” We’ve almost reached the city’s incorporation in 1826 (as a town). Much happened here before Lowell even existed.

1st steamboat traveled from Boston to Concord NH in 1819 via Middlesex Canal & Merrimack River

By 1853 railroads put Middlesex Canal out of business and much of it was filled in

First “textile mill” in Middlesex County built in 1801 by Moses Hale on River Meadow Brook in what became Lowell

In 1805 a stone bridge across the Merrimack at Pawtucket Falls replaced the 1792 wooden structure at cost of $14000

In 1812 flow of textiles from England to America cut off due to war. Demand for domestic manufacturing explodes

In 1813, Phineas Whiting + Josiah Fletcher built a wooden cotton mill on the Merrimack in Chelmsford

In 1816 saw + grist mills were built at Pawtucket Falls, at the junction of the Concord + Merrimack + in Chelmsford on the Merrimack