There was no Lowell City Council meeting this week so in anticipation of our city’s coming bicentennial, I’ll take a break from current city affairs and look back 200 years to the founding of Lowell. Earlier this month I gave a talk on this topic at the Pollard Memorial Library, so today’s newsletter will put that talk into text.

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In Massachusetts, local governments are not sovereign entities but are instead creatures of state government. Consequently, a new city or town must be created by the state legislature and the local government so created only has the power granted to it by the state. (In a contemporary context, that is why the city council must file “home rule” legislation to change how the city operates and that is also why the state can impose requirements like the MBTA Communities Law on cities and towns without first obtaining their consent.)

In late 1825, the Massachusetts state legislature enacted Chapter 112 of the Special Laws of 1825, An Act to Incorporate the Town of Lowell. Here is the relevant portion of the new law which took effect on March 1, 1826:

Sec. 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, That the northeasterly part of the town of Chelmsford, in the County of Middlesex, lying easterly and northerly of a line drawn as follows, viz:

Beginning at Merrimack river, at a stone post, about two hundred rods above the mouth of Patucket Canal, so called;

Thence running southerly, in a straight course, until it strikes the Middlesex Canal, at a point ten rods above the Canal Bridge, near the dwelling-house of Henry Coburn;

Thence southerly, on said canal, twenty rods,

Thence a due east course to a stone post at Concord river,

Be, and hereby is, incorporated into a Town, by the name of Lowell, and the inhabitants of said town of Lowell are hereby invested will all the powers and privileges, and shall also be subject to the duties and requisitions of other incorporate towns, according to the constitution and laws of this Commonwealth.

This original grant of land was 2874 acres which is only about one-third the area of today’s Lowell. With the caveat that it is difficult to map a 200-year-old property description on today’s terrain, my best estimate of the boundaries described in the legislation would begin at the intersection of Pawtucket Street and Broadway at the Lowell Humane Society, then run southerly to the intersection of Route 3 and Route 110 near Cross Point (imagine Wilder Street as that boundary line); then run easterly along Route 495 to the Concord River; and then up the Concord River to the Merrimack (next to the Lowell Memorial Auditorium).

In 1826, everything north of the Merrimack remained Dracut; everything east of the Concord was Tewksbury; everything south of Route 495 was Billerica; and everything west of Wilder Street was Chelmsford.

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When early English traders ventured up the Merrimack River in the 1620s, they found a substantial Native American village on the south bank where another river, the Concord, joined the Merrimack. This settlement was called Wamesit. Two miles upstream they found a smaller community at the falls, this one on the north bank of the river. This village, called Pawtucket, swelled in size each spring when Native people from across the region traveled there to catch salmon, shad, and alewives as the fish migrated upstream.

This annual gathering, part festival and part fishing expedition, also attracted an English clergyman named John Eliot who devoted his life to introducing the Native people of New England to Christianity. Eliot returned to Wamesit and Pawtucket annually, building a log chapel on the site of today’s Eliot Church which is named for him.

Soon, the number of English people coming to New England exploded which created pressure to expand inland. In 1655, a group of families from Woburn who sought more space petitioned the colonial legislature to grant them a town charter for the existing Wamesit settlement. Rev. Eliot interceded with his own charter petition which the legislature granted. This caused Wamesit to be an official town of the Massachusetts colony. The boundaries of this grant mirrored those of the Lowell charter in 1826. The legislature also instructed the would-be settlers from Woburn to go further up the Merrimack and settle there. They called their town Chelmsford.

The English and the Native Americans peacefully co-existed for a time, but friction grew as more immigrants arrived. In 1675 war erupted. Known as King Philip’s War, the conflict was the deadliest in the history of the North American continent in terms of the percentage of the population that died. The English prevailed but hostility persisted. Most of the Native People abandoned Wamesit and moved to northern New Hampshire and Canada. Before leaving, Wannalancit, the local leader, executed a deed that purported to convey the Native land to a group of Chelmsford residents who called themselves The Proprietors of Wamesit Neck.

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By the time of this conveyance, Chelmsford was well developed as compared to Wamesit which remained sparsely settled pastureland with only a few English families residing on it. One such family was led by Stephen Pierce whose farmhouse was at today’s intersection of Parker, Powell and Chelmsford streets, about where the Laura Lee School is located. In 1725, the people of Chelmsford elected Pierce to be their representative to the colonial legislature, however, when he arrived in Boston, the body refused to seat him on the grounds that he lived in Wamesit, not Chelmsford. Although the men from Chelmsford may have owned the Wamesit land, the legislature had never altered the legal standing of the former Native community. With the English residents of Wamesit threatening to withhold their taxes, the town of Chelmsford petitioned the legislature to annex Wamesit to Chelmsford. The petition was allowed and from then until 1826, Wamesit was legally part of Chelmsford with the neighborhood renamed East Chelmsford.

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Early on the morning of April 19, 1775, 18-year-old Benjamin Pierce, who lived with and worked for his uncle Stephen, heard gunfire from the southwest. He abandoned his farm chores, grabbed his musket, and joined his fellow militiamen from Chelmsford on the march toward Concord.  Pierce saw considerable combat, including at Bunker Hill and Saratoga. After the war he moved to New Hampshire and eventually became governor of that state. In 1852, his son Franklin was elected 14th president of the United States.

With independence, Americans embraced “internal improvements” which we would call transportation infrastructure project. But instead of high-speed rail and new airport terminals, late 18th century Americans built canals.

Rivers were the highways of early America, and the Merrimack was among the most important. Harvesting timber from the forests of New Hampshire and floating it down the Merrimack to the shipyards and docks of Newburyport was crucial to New England’s economy. But the Pawtucket Falls, where the Merrimack dropped 32 feet in less than a mile, was an obstacle to navigation. Timber and goods had to be brought ashore above the falls then dragged by oxen along the riverbank to below the falls to be returned to the river for the rest of the journey to the coast. It was inefficient, but there was no alternative.

In 1792, a group of merchants seeking to improve the flow of goods from interior New England to Newburyport, obtained a corporate charter for The Proprietors of Locks and Canals on Merrimack River. The company’s purpose was to construct a transportation canal that circumvented Pawtucket Falls. Completed in 1796, the Pawtucket Canal followed the local topography and used four lock chambers to handle the difference in river elevation above and below the falls.

The Pawtucket Canal, which was financed by user tolls, thrived but its success was short lived. In 1803, the competing Middlesex Canal began operations. It left the Merrimack half a mile upstream from the Pawtucket Canal and then traveled 27 miles through Middlesex County to the port of Boston. Because trading with Boston was preferable to trading with Newburyport, most of the Merrimack River traffic diverted to the Middlesex Canal and the Pawtucket Canal’s business was ruined.

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Born to an affluent Newburyport family two weeks before the start of the American Revolution, Francis Cabot Lowell became a successful merchant by age 23, importing silk and tea from China and hand-woven cotton textiles from India. But conflict between European powers in the early 1800s disrupted international trade and convinced Lowell of the need for the United States to manufacture goods at home.

In 1810, Lowell and his family embarked on a two-year tour of England, ostensibly to improve his health, but more likely so he could learn more about the robust English textile industry. When the War of 1812 began, Lowell, with the designs of English textile machinery imprinted in his brain, returned to America determined to launch his own textile mill.

Enlisting his brother-in-law, Patrick Tracy Jackson, to manage the operation, Amesbury mechanic Paul Moody to construct the equipment, and Boston merchants Nathan Appleton and Israel Thorndike to fund it, Lowell created the Boston Manufacturing Company and built the first fully integrated textile mill in America on the bank of the Charles River in Waltham, Massachusetts.

The operation was a great success. Investors received returns of 25 percent and the appetite for domestically produced cotton cloth seemed insatiable. But expansion would require a new site since the single mill in Waltham exhausted the hydro power of the Charles River which had a drop of just six feet.

Before the quest for a new site commenced, Francis Cabot Lowell died of pneumonia in 1817 at age 42. His associates pursued his dream which brought them in November 1821 to a point overlooking Pawtucket Falls. Amazed by the potential hydro power created by the 32-foot drop in the Merrimack at that point, the Boston Associates, as they were then called, used local agents to discretely purchase all the farmland along the Merrimack River and the Pawtucket Canal within the old Wamesit settlement.

Employing a battalion of Irish immigrant laborers who had been led to East Chelmsford by Hugh Cummiskey, the Boston Associates built a dam at Pawtucket Falls, widened and deepened the existing Pawtucket Canal, and dug a new canal, the Merrimack, which would power the massive mills of the Merrimack Manufacturing Company which produced its first cotton cloth in 1823.

At first, the mill owners and managers were content to work within the structure of Chelmsford town government, but the rapidly growing manufacturing facility and all that came with it required greater government involvement than the farmers who dominated Chelmsford town government were willing to fund.

This disconnect prompted the mill owners in 1825 to petition the legislature to create a new town, a petition that was granted as noted at the start of this story. Although other names were considered, the founders decided to call this new town Lowell in honor of their departed leader, Francis Cabot Lowell.

The town of Lowell grew rapidly. In 1834, the state legislature annexed Belvidere Village (today’s lower Belvidere) from Tewksbury to Lowell. In 1836, the legislature upgraded the charter to make Lowell a city.

Over time, the legislature annexed portions of neighboring towns to Lowell including 680 acres from Dracut in 1851 (Centralville); 1129 acres from Chelmsford (Upper Highlands), 2168 acres from Dracut (the rest of Centralville and all of Pawtucketville), and 210 acres from Tewksbury (part of Belvidere), all in 1874; 220 acres from Tewksbury in 1888; and 1087 acres from Tewksbury in 1906, which combined to give Lowell its current geographic configuration.

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Here are some upcoming in-person tours I’ll be leading in September:

On Sunday, September 7, 2025, at 10 am, I’ll lead a tour of the Tyler Park Historic District. This free 90-minute walk will begin at the Tyler Park fountain on Westford Street, and is in conjunction with the Friends of Tyler Park “Autumn Market” which features more than a dozen local crafters, makers, farmers and bakers selling their goods at the park from 11 am until 2 pm.

On Saturday, September 20, and Sunday, September 21, 2025, both at 10 am, I’ll lead a free 90-minute walking tour of historic Lowell Cemetery. The tour begins at the Knapp Avenue entrance (next to Shedd Park) with the same tour offered both days. Each year, I change to route and content of the tour so even if you’ve been before, consider joining us again this year.