History

The original grant for the town of Lowell only included about 20 percent of the land that makes up the city today. Over the rest of the nineteenth century, the Massachusetts State Legislature annexed portions of Tewksbury, Dracut, and Chelmsford to Lowell to give the city its current configuration. Here…

Remembering the 1980 Winter Olympics By Dean Contover We woke up at 7:30 a.m., warmed up the van and left Waitsfield, Vermont, heading for the Olympic Games at Lake Placid, New York. It was the last day of the XIII Olympic Games. The final games were going to be played…

Susannah Martin: “Martyr of Superstition” by Juliet H. Mofford A marker at the end of North Martin Road in Amesbury notes: “Here stood the house of Susanna Martin. An honest, hardworking Christian woman accused of being a witch, tried, and executed at Salem, July 19, 1692.  A Martyr of Superstition.” The…

When English fur traders first ventured up the Merrimack River in the 1620s and 1630s, they encountered two established villages of the indigenous people who inhabited the region. The first village, known as Pawtucket, was located at the north side of the river at the falls. The other village, a…

Indigenous History Walk: Ever wondered what Lowell looked like and who lived here before Lowell became a city? Why not join a free and open to the public walking tour of Lowell? You will learn about the area’s Native American history, but also about Indigenous persistence in the city to…

On January 7, 2014, we posted a story by Mehmed Ali and Beth Brassel about Moody Gardens, a Lowell bar of the 1950s and 60s located at 294 Moody Street. The story (which can be read in full here) tells how the bar struggled until one night in 1957 when…

The dreaded red “X” recently was posted on the Smith Baker Center. That signals to first responders that the building is unsafe to enter but it also is an indicator that it’s unlikely the building will remain standing for much longer. Given that development, here is some background on the…

In honor of the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, here’s a poem (with some Lowell connections) by Billy Collins that we originally posted ten years ago on Sept 11, 2011.  The Names by Billy Collins Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night. A soft rain stole…