The Lowell City Council commenced its summer schedule this week which means there was no meeting last Tuesday. From now through September the council will meet on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month. On these “no meeting” weeks, I will instead write about Lowell history both to provide context for current political issues but also to increase awareness of Lowell’s Bicentennial which happens next year.

Earlier this spring, members of the Clemente Park Committee, a volunteer organization that hosts events and helps maintain the city-owned park at 803 Middlesex Street, asked to interview me for a forthcoming documentary about the park. After my on-camera segment was completed, members of the committee told me they often direct people interested in the history of the park to a blog post I wrote in 2016. They asked if I had any plans to update and expand that piece. I do, so today’s newsletter has the first installment of that story.

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When the first English people came here 400 years ago, the land now occupied by Clemente Park was swampy and vacant. A major Indigenous settlement was located just a mile to the northeast where the Concord River flowed into the Merrimack. That village was called Wamesit. It straddled the Concord where Kerouac Park and the Lowell Memorial Auditorium are today.

By 1690 political circumstances had changed and the Native people, likely under duress, conveyed Wamesit to a group of English residents from neighboring Chelmsford. Calling themselves the Proprietors of Wamesit Neck, the colonists used their new land which they called East Chelmsford for farming and grazing.

While East Chelmsford was primarily a farming community, it was also a transportation hub. From the arrival of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts, the survival of the English colony depended on extracting natural resources from the interior, moving that harvest to the Atlantic coast, and trading with England. The most important commodity was timber.

Massive tree trunks from the forests of New Hampshire were rolled into the Merrimack, bundled together into rafts, and floated down the river towards the sea. This worked well until the rafts reached Pawtucket Falls. To allow the logs to go over the falls would yield a load of kindling rather than tall masts for English ships. Consequently, before they could reach the falls the logs were hauled out of the river and dragged along the shore to a point below the falls where they would be slid back into the river to continue their journey to Newburyport. This was inefficient, but there was no alternative.

That changed in 1792 when some merchants from Newburyport decided to dig a canal that bypassed Pawtucket Falls. Incorporated as The Proprietors of the Locks and Canals on the Merrimack River, this group used the topography of the land south of the Merrimack to dictate the canal’s route. This meant enlarging an existing stream, going around the big School Street hill, and excavating the swampy land in the vicinity of Clemente Park until the canal reached the Concord River and thence the Merrimack. The new canal, called the Pawtucket Canal, took five years to construct, cost $50,000, and used four lock chambers to handle the 32-foot change in elevation of the Merrimack above and below the falls. (Not far from Clemente Park, the lock chamber across from the Lowell Justice Center in the Hamilton Canal District was called Swamp Locks because – the land was swampy).

The Pawtucket Canal was a huge convenience to those shipping goods from the interior to the seacoast and users willingly paid the tolls charged by the Proprietors. But the success of the Pawtucket Canal was short-lived. Just a few years after its completion a rival company opened the Middlesex Canal which came off the Merrimack River upstream from Pawtucket Falls (about where Hadley Field is located on outer Middlesex Street) and then angled towards Boston over a 27-mile course through Middlesex County. Because merchants could get more for their goods in Boston than at Newburyport, most of the Merrimack River traffic diverted to the Middlesex Canal and the Pawtucket Canal fell into disuse.

That remained the case until 1821 when a group of entrepreneurs seeking a substantial source of waterpower to drive the novel textile mills they envisioned, quietly purchased the stock of the Locks and Canal Company and nearly all the farmland on the south side of the Merrimack River and along the Pawtucket Canal. In September 1823, the first great cotton mill, the Merrimack Manufacturing Company, began operations.

This new textile center grew rapidly. On March 1, 1826, the state legislature split East Chelmsford from Chelmsford to form a new town which was called Lowell. Within two decades, Lowell had more than 20,000 residents and was the second largest city in Massachusetts.

While the mills were mostly made of brick, all the people who worked inside them had to live somewhere, most often in newly constructed wooden houses. This created a substantial market for lumber and building materials. Because logs could easily be floated through the Pawtucket Canal, people opened more than a half dozen lumber yards and sawmills along its banks between School Street and Thorndike Street.

One of the biggest lumber dealers was Nicholas G. Norcross who was born in Orono, Maine, in 1805. Early in life he worked in the lumber business on the Penobscot River. He moved to Lowell in 1845 and established a large lumber business on Middlesex Street on the site that would eventually become Clemente Park.

Norcross, who became known as the “Lumber King” partnered with John Fiske to operate Norcross & Fiske lumber dealers. Here’s an advertisement the company placed in the 1851 Lowell City Directory:

 Purchasers of lumber can be furnished at short notice with timber of almost any size or description for frames and other purposes at their steam saw mills at Lowell or Lawrence where can be found constantly on hand a large variety of logs and mills capable of cutting 50,000 feet per day. Also shingles, clapboards, laths, and seasoned lumber of various kinds and qualities to suit customers. Gauge sawed boards, sawed by gauges to an even thickness. Planing of superior quality, both for smoothness of surface and uniformity of thickness done by Mr. Norcross’s newly invented machine.

A few years later, Norcross split the company in two with Norcross & Fiske continuing to operate the steam operated sawmill which was where today’s Boys & Girls Club of Greater Lowell is located. Norcross spun off the lumber yard and dealership to a new company called Norcross, Saunders and Co. which involved Charles W. Saunders of Lawrence, a wealthy lawyer and investor.

Nicholas Norcross died in 1860 at age 55. Charles Saunders gained ownership of the steam mill and continued to operate it and the lumber yard although he was an absentee manager who spent most of his time at his Boston law office. Other Lowell lumber dealers became the primary providers of wooden building materials in the city.

Charles Saunders continued to operate the business from afar although he sold the rear of the lot which bordered the Pawtucket Canal to James Payne of Lawrence who opened an iron foundry. (Payne Street which runs from the rear of Clemente Park to School Street is named for this guy; the street that runs alongside Clemente Park from Middlesex to Payne is named Saunders Street, after Charles and his family.)

Eventually, Saunders placed the land he retained into a real estate trust with himself as trustee. By 1891, the Saunders lumber business had ceased operations with the land being leased to neighboring lumber yards for storage. In several years, the city of Lowell recorded tax liens against the property.

Through all of this, baseball became prominent in New England. Lowell had a team in the professional New England League. Other teams in the league were Worcester, Lawrence, Brockton, Haverhill, Lynn, Fall River, and New Bedford. While baseball was popular in Lowell, attendance at games was low because the team played at Spalding Field which was on the Tewksbury line, far from where most people in Lowell lived and difficult to get to. (Spalding Field became Alumni Field in the Cawley Stadium Athletic Complex).

Early in the 1906 season, a young man named Alexander Bannwart convinced the owner of the Lowell club to give him a tryout. Bannwart, who was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1880 but who graduated from Phillips Academy and Princeton University, made the team even though he had not played baseball in college. Later that summer when a proposed sale of the team fell through, Bannwart bought the team for $500.

Bannwart was better at promotion than baseball and he soon had fans in Lowell aflutter with promises to bring in top players and to build a first-class ballpark for the team’s games. He also changed his name from Alexander Bannwart to Al Winn.

In December 1906, the Lowell Courier Citizen reported that Al Winn “secures land for new baseball park” described as “a lumber yard not far from the heart of the city.” The article goes on to state:

Upon the site, New England league baseball will be played next season. All league formalities have been handled by James F. Owens, and it now remains for Mr. Winn to proceed with the construction of a grand stand, bleachers and fence. Mr. Winn states that the park will be up to the standard of Eastern league grounds, and in this event, baseball in Lowell will once more be conducted on a profitable basis.

Spalding park, where the game has been played for several years, is considered too remote, the fans having refused to go so far to see baseball. That a ground so centrally located as the new site is could be found in Lowell was believed to be out of the question. No one ever dreamed of such a location, but Owner Winn made a tour of the city and happened upon this location, and jumped at the chance to buy it.

His attorney, Mr. Owens, carefully concealed from the owner of the lot the purpose of the proposed purchase as he did not want to buy it at a high price. After several weeks of dickering, the transfer was effected Saturday, and Lowell will next season have a modern baseball park.

It will cost several thousands to build a grandstand, fence and bleachers, but Mr. Winn has confidence in the future of baseball in Lowell and is willing to go the limit to perform his part in its success. The team next season will be practically new.

Although later articles portrayed Mr. Winn as the owner of the land, the Courier’s phrase that he had “secured” the land was more accurate. Records at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds show that in January 1907, Winn recorded a notice of a five year lease between himself as tenant and Charles G. Saunders, Trustee, as landlord. The document also gave Winn the option to purchase the land during the life of the lease for $40,000 plus 4 percent interest per year.

With the land under his control, Winn scrambled to build a stadium. On February 26, 1907, the Courier reported

The new ball park Is larger than National League grounds in Boston – The right field fence will be on the Middlesex Street side and this will be the short field. Occasionally a ball may be batted high over this fence but a left hander will have to do the trick as a rule . . . Manager Winn has had all of the lumber removed from the ground and half of the fence is built. Just as soon as a little warm weather appears, a big force of carpenters will be put to work and the ground and equipment will be in readiness for the first game, April 19.

To raise interest in the team, Winn invited fans to submit proposed names for the new baseball park and recruited five local sportswriters to select the winner. Washington Park was the top pick with three votes. Franklin Park and Central Park each received one vote.

The field was ready by the start of the season. Admission was 25 cents although a seat in the grandstand cost another 25 cents. Attendance averaged 1000 fans per game throughout the 1907 season.

Despite high hopes for the 1908 season the team played poorly, and attendance declined. Soon Winn struggled to pay visiting teams their contractual fee and was late meeting his own team’s payroll. By the end of the season, the league ordered the Lowell team to play all its remaining games on the road to ensure the other teams would get their money.

As soon as the 1909 season began, Winn put the team up for sale, or the league forced Winn to do it. In any case, by the middle of June a local group had purchased the team which they promptly moved back to Spalding Field on the Tewksbury line. Despite the distance from the center of Lowell, attendance surged.

Al Winn was left with a vacant ballpark and debts he struggled to pay. He leased the field to traveling shows and local organizations for field days. In the winter, he sprayed the field with water and charged admission for ice skating. Washington Park limped on as a sporadically used entertainment venue but soon Winn defaulted on his lease and Charles Saunders resumed legal control of the property. In May 1913 a “spectacular blaze” destroyed the grandstand, the neighboring foundry, and several nearby businesses.

While all of this was happening, the neighborhood around Washington Park filled with Franco-American immigrants and descendants of immigrants. To serve the spiritual needs of the neighborhood, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate purchased the old Branch Street Baptist Church and reopened it as Notre Dame de Lourdes Catholic Church. (This was located where Pailin Plaza now sits). Besides going to church these new residents also voted. With city government at the time having ward councilors, these residents found a strong advocate in Louis Lord who became known as the Mayor of Middlesex Street. (The nearby Lord Overpass was named for Louis Lord; his son, Raymond Lord, served as the city’s mayor in the early 1960s).

In 1920, when the city’s Board of Parks requested an appropriation from the city council to purchase land on B Street in the upper Highlands and construct a city park on it – this would become today’s Callery Park – Councilor Lord challenged the plan saying there were no public parks in the lower Highlands and that with rising automobile traffic on Branch and Middlesex Streets, too many kids were being injured while playing in the streets. He demanded a park for his district. His constituents and the pastor of Notre Dame added their voices to the protest.

The council acceded to the wishes of the residents of the lower Highlands and appropriated the necessary funds. In December 1921, the Board of Park Commissioners voted to take the land by eminent domain. In the meantime, Charles G. Saunders died. On May 11, 1923, his heirs, Mary Saunders, Annie Saunders, and Edith Saunders, all of Lawrence, executed a deed conveying any interest the family might retain in the land to the city of Lowell. The 1922 Board of Parks report has the city spending $4000 for improvements to the park including a new baseball diamond, a standard backstop, and an 8-foot-high wire fence to protect adjoining properties from well hit baseballs.

The city retained the name Washington Park which served the needs of the neighborhood for many decades. It also became a prime venue for adult softball leagues which were big in Lowell from the end of World War II up through the 1970s.

On December 31, 1972, Roberto Clemente, the star outfielder of the Pittsburgh Pirates and a native of Puerto Rico, died when a plane he had chartered to fly relief supplies from Puerto Rico to earthquake-ravaged Nicaragua crashed on takeoff killing all aboard including Clemente.

Clemente’s death caused an outpouring of grief across America, especially in communities like Lowell that had significant numbers of residents from Puerto Rico. With so many Latino superstars on major league baseball today, it is difficult for us to comprehend what an icon Clemente was in Latino-American culture. (He was the first Latino player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame when he was posthumously inducted the year after his death.)

In March 1973, Lowell City Council Gail Dunfey, at the request of the many Puerto Rican residents of Lower Belvidere, moved that the council name an existing park on Fayette Street in honor of Clemente. The motion was referred to the city’s Law Department which discovered that the park had already been dedicated to someone else. Then, members of Lowell’s Spanish-speaking softball teams asked the city council to rename Washington Park in honor of Clemente. The council voted to do that but when nothing happened for several months, Council Phil Shea filed a motion that the Mayor’s office organize a dedication ceremony at the park.

That ceremony was held on Sunday, August 5, 1973, which was proclaimed Roberto Clemente Day in Lowell. A full schedule of activities took place with a memorial Mass for Clemente at the Immaculate Conception Church, a softball game between Rio Nondo and Los Borincano at the park, and speeches and the official dedication ceremony afterwards.

The place has been known as Roberto Clemente Park ever since.

When Lowell was transformed in the late 1980s by the arrival of thousands of refugees from Cambodia, many of them settled in the neighborhood around Clemente Park. These new residents made the park the center of athletic, social and cultural activity in the neighborhood and for the citywide Cambodian community. In 2019, members of that community asked that the park be renamed Pailin Park to reflect those who predominantly use the park today. For several reasons I won’t get into here, that effort failed.

In a future newsletter this summer, I’ll revisit the history of Clemente Park and try to explain how the neighborhood became home to much of the city’s Cambodian community and why the effort to rename the park in 2019 was unsuccessful – thus far.

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This week on richardhowe.com:

Louise Peloquin translated L’Etoille articles from 1924 about the Bridge Street Bridge.

I posted the text of a speech I gave on the history of Memorial Day.

Bob Forrant announced the release of A People’s Map of Lowell and explained where you can acquire a paper version of the map.

Leo Racicot shared a nostalgic essay on summertime in Lowell in the 1960s.

For the anniversary of D-Day, I posted a post article about how the invasion of Europe was experienced here in Lowell.

Terry Downes had another of his baseball poems – Postponed!

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If you’re reading this early on Sunday, you still have time to get over to Lowell Cemetery for today’s tour. It begins at 10am inside the Lawrence Street Gate.