History

May 5, 1861: Butler takes Relay House

By May 6, 1861, Washington DC was safe from immediate capture by Confederate forces. When Fort Sumter was fired upon, Washington was without any organized and reliable military force while Confederate forces began gathering across the Potomac in Alexandria and Arlington. The Sixth Massachusetts Infantry, the unit from Lowell that…

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‘The Big Move: Immigrant Voices from a Mill City’

. “Robert Forrant and Christoph Strobel, under contract to Lowell National Historical Park, defined, researched and created an ethnographic overview of immigrant communities, past and present, in Lowell, Massachusetts. “The Big Move” features a selection of the thirty-five oral histories they compiled for the larger story. Emblematic of Lowell’s diverse population,…

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From Desert One to Abbottabad

On April 24, 1980, the world awoke to news that the a rescue mission launched by the United States to retrieve its Iranian Embassy personnel who were being held hostage in Tehran had ended in a deadly failure. While at an intermediate position known as Desert One, a series of…

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In the Merrimack Valley: Red-Mass Group Redistricting Suggestions

Last week the folks at the Red-Mass Group blog offered some suggestions on how to redistrict three Merrimack Valley/Northern Middlesex State Senate districts. Two of the districts – First Middlesex and Second Essex Middlesex rate a high “leaning Republican” rating from them based on the Brown Coakley race results while…

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Sun Articles About Ben Butler and the Pawtucket Dam

Two articles in today’s Lowell SUN are worth your attention. Longtime Sun sports writer Dave Pevear is a history buff at heart with a particular interest in the Civil War. Here’s a link to his interesting story about Ben Butler: http://www.lowellsun.com/todaysheadlines/ci_17969383. Correspondent Marie Donovan attended the community briefing on the…

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