The Sesquicentennial of the Civil War.

Remembrance of the Civil War and the role played by the city of  Lowell and its citizenry continues as a theme as the Lowell Historical Society opens its 2011-2012 program season with a presentation entitled  “J.C. Ayer & Company and the Civil War.”  The program will be held on Sunday afternoon October 23, 2011  at 1:00pm in the Federal Building at the downtown Lowell campus of  Middlesex Community College, 50 Kearney Square.  The program is open to the public with free parking available in the Middlesex Community College  lot across the street.

The program will be presented by Lowell Historical Society President Cliff Hoyt – an avid collector of Ayer memorabilia.  President Hoyt will discuss  and address the question of whether or not the Ayer brothers ran a cotton plantation in the South during the Civil War,  the impact of some of the Ayer advertising on the national coin shortage in 1862, Frederick Ayer’s meeting with President Lincoln,  how Egypt helped publish Ayer’s American Almanac, and finally, the origin and the unveiling of J. C. Ayer’s monument Victory now located in Monument Square in front of Lowell City Hall.