Lowell factory town video1/15/2024 The Pawtucket Falls made this difficult, as they included a 32-foot drop. The region's forests made it an attractive area for logging, but necessitated a way of shipping lumber down the river. The presence of Pawtucket Falls offered a source of water power that enabled the construction of a sawmill and gristmill in the early 18th century, followed by a fulling mill in 1737. Early industrialization Paul MoodyĮntrepreneurs and industrialists soon began using Chelmsford as a location for new mills and manufacturing plants. With that, what is now Lowell became entirely colonist-owned, existing as part of the towns of Chelmsford and Dracut. The final parts of Pawtucket territory were finally purchased in the early 18th century, with a deed issued in 1714 removing their last legal claim and the annexation of "Indian town" in 1726. The tribe moved to Canada, wandering with the Abenaki before briefly returning in 1692 to negotiate with tribes on behalf of Chelmsford during King William's War. Wannalancit, the son of Passaconaway and the Pawtucket leader after his father's retirement, took the surviving tribesmen and moved to Wickassee before selling the land in 1686. īy the time the war ended in 1676, the community was much reduced. The colonists began actively buying land from the Pawtucket, trading those 500 acres for the island of Wickassee above the Pawtucket Falls, and the hysteria generated by King Philip's War weakened both the tribe and its relations with the colonists. Subsequent grants of land extended the town to cover most of the territory Lowell now occupies, with the exception of 500 acres of farmland reserved for the Pawtucket. Colonists began to move closer to the native tribes with the founding of Chelmsford in 1653. A dedicated church building was built in 1653, remaining until 1824, when it was demolished. Eliot returned a year later, and quickly founded a church there with a native convert named Samuel as the pastor. During the 1640s, Major Simon Willard traded extensively with the tribes, and in 1647 was accompanied in his expedition by the noted preacher John Eliot. The first interactions between the colonists and the Pawtucket group occurred through trade and religious conversion. At the time that the colonists first substantively encountered the tribes, Daniel Gookin that they had a combined population of 12,000, with 3,000 living in the capital. The site of Lowell itself (and a portion of Dracut) served as the location of both the Pawtucket and Wamesit capitals, primarily due to the availability of salmon at Pawtucket Falls and the transportation system provided by the local network of rivers. The land above the Pawtucket Falls on the northern bank of the Merrimack was inhabited by the Pawtucket group, while the land along both sides of the Concord River was inhabited by the Wamesits. The area around what is now Lowell was an important hub for the Pennacook Indians. Pre-colonial history and founding John Eliot, the missionary who made the first formal contact with the Pawtucket and Wamesit tribes. Lowell is considered the "Cradle of the American Industrial Revolution", as it was the first large-scale factory town in the United States. Lowell's "rebirth", partially tied to Lowell National Historical Park, has made it a model for other former industrial towns, although the city continues to struggle with deindustrialization and suburbanization. However, within approximately a century, the decline and collapse of that industry in New England placed the city into a deep recession. The city of Lowell was started in the 1820s as a money-making venture and social project referred to as "The Lowell Experiment", and quickly became the United States' largest textile center. The history of Lowell, Massachusetts, is closely tied to its location along the Pawtucket Falls of the Merrimack River, from being an important fishing ground for the Pennacook tribe to providing water power for the factories that formed the basis of the city's economy for a century. ( August 2022) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Several templates and tools are available to assist in formatting, such as reFill ( documentation) and Citation bot ( documentation). Please consider converting them to full citations to ensure the article remains verifiable and maintains a consistent citation style. This article uses bare URLs, which are uninformative and vulnerable to link rot.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |