USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county, Vol. I > Part 29
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Worsted Goods are manufactured at Framing- ham, Westford, Lowell, and Chelmsford, employ- ing capital to the amount of $ 1,213,000, and turning out goods valued at $ 1,619,566.
Machinery. - The manufacture of machinery is one of the important industries of the county, em- ploying, in 1875, $ 1,839,396 of capital, and fur- nishing $ 2,095,952 in machinery of various kinds. The works are chiefly at Lowell, Cambridge, and Everett.
Wooden Ware employs $1,719,200, and produces manufactured goods of the value of $1,980,234, principally in Wakefield, at the celebrated works of the Wakefield Rattan Company, whose annual pro- duction is given at $ 633,172. The establishment of these works may be said to have inaugurated a new era by introducing articles of utility and lux- ury from a material previously little used on this continent, but in which lightness, strength, and beauty are in a remarkable degree combined. Cam- bridge, Townsend, Lowell, and Watertown are also engaged in making wooden ware.
Food Preparations are manufactured in the county to the value of $ 12,104,720 ; with a capi- tal of $1,722,626. We have here another branch of industry of recent growth, but supplying an im- portant need.
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
the value of $3,278,440, employing a capital of $1,969,848.
Clothing employs capital amounting to $890,689, producing a great variety of manufactured goods of the value of $2,368,197.
Metals and Metal Goods are manufactured to | to one article of traffic which, from being at first considered a luxury, is now universally regarded as a necessity. The idea of harvesting the ice crop of our fresh-water ponds in storehouses, to be trans- ported to foreign or domestic ports, or left at the doors of consumers at home, originated with Frederick Tudor. In 1805 he shipped his first cargo to Martinique. The venture provoked the derision of his merchant acquaintances, but the cargo having arrived in perfect condition found a ready sale. The business prospered. He obtained leases of Fresh Pond, Spot Pond, Walden Pond, and Smith's Pond, all in Middlesex County. To the first named a railway was built solely for the transportation of ice. Extending itself far beyond the most sanguine expectations of its originator, this extraordinary traffic contributed largely to the wealth of the county.
Printing and Publishing have an invested capi- tal of $ 800,000, and turn off their presses printed matter to the value of $ 1,410,268. In this branch Cambridge takes the lead, having $680,000 of the capital, and yielding $ 1,271,400 of the whole product. The imprints of the University and River- side presses are of world-wide reputation, and it is believed that nowhere is printing as an art carried to greater perfection than in these establishments.
Paper is represented by a capital of $ 731,325 and a production of $970,300. The manufacture is chiefly carried on at Pepperell, Watertown, and Groton. Mills were quite early established at Watertown and at Newton Lower Falls.
Other industries of importance are the manu- facture of glass, chiefly at East Cambridge, where it was first introduced in 1814,1 of lumber, boxes, bricks, extensively produced in Cambridge and Somerville, of clocks and watches at Waltham, and of rubber, scientific instruments, and furniture, to- gether with various textile fabrics not included in our enumeration under specific heads.
We conclude our summary of the industrial and other interests of the county with a brief reference
In 1775 the whole number of manufactories in Middlesex County was 3,156, giving employment to 53,000 persons, of whom 17,934 were females, who earned yearly wages amounting to $ 24,145,051. These manufactories represented an aggregate capi- tal of $47,053,532. Lowell employed 18,311 persons in her mills and workshops; Cambridge, 6,953; Waltham, 2,500; Marlborough, 2,404; Woburn, 2,226; Somerville, 1,991. The yearly value of materials of all kinds used by them is fixed at $57,404,804, and the total value of their pro- duction at $103,085,248.
XXVI.
CANALS AND RAILWAYS.
THE little that is to be said concerning artificial | Nature against her was a serious obstacle to the inland navigation within the county is indentified with the history of two of the most enterprising, skilful, and far-sighted of its citizens. The various schemes that were discussed, after the Revolution, had in view the restoration to the metropolis of Massachusetts the traffic which had once been hers, but was now diverted, by the natural course of the great rivers and by the improvement of their navi- gation, to other points. This discrimination of
prosperity of Boston ; for, instead of bringing trade to her, the great rivers of the state carried it away from her. Thus, the Connecticut on the west and the Merrimack on the north became, in the first instance an absolute, and in the second a partial, barrier which commerce would not cross. In other words, the Connecticut became tributary to New York, and the Merrimack to Portsmouth or New- buryport. It was all important to the future of Boston to solve this problem.
In June, 1793, an act passed the legislature incorporating James Sullivan of Boston, Oliver Prescott of Groton, James Winthrop of Cambridge,
1 Glassworks were first introduced in Boston in 1793, but were not snecessfully established there until some years later. Glass bottles were, however, made at Braintree, Mass., before the Revolution.
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CANALS AND RAILWAYS.
Loammi Baldwin of Woburn, Benjamin Hall, Jonathan Porter, and others of Medford, as the Proprietors of the Middlesex Canal. It was at first contemplated to open the canal from the Merrimack, at Chelmsford, to the Mystic, at Medford; but subsequent legislation extended it across Charles- town Neck, to the mill-pond, and by a second lock to Charles River, thus making continuous water-communication with the metropolis. The surveys were made by an English engineer named Weston : Colonel Loammi Baldwin, a native of Woburn, and one of the incorporators, superin- tended the construction. In 1803 the canal was opened for traffic. Its cost was something more than half a million of dollars.
The canal was twenty-seven miles long, with a breadth of thirty and a depth of four feet. Begin- ing at tide-water at Charlestown, it ascended one hundred and seven feet, by thirteen locks, to Con- cord River. Crossing this stream, it descended twenty-one feet, by three locks, to the bend of the Merrimack, a little above Pawtucket Falls. The locks were well built of hewn stone. Boats of twenty-four tons burden usually occupied twelve hours passing through the canal. Improvements made in the river above Chelmsford rendered the Merrimack navigable for boats to Concord, New Hampshire. During its period of prosperity the annual income to the Middlesex Canal from tolls amounted to $25,000.
Until the era of railways the Middlesex Canal was a work of great public utility. The lumber and grain from the Upper Merrimack, with other products of the region tributary to that river, now found their way through the canal to the metropolis. The commodities of the city were transported back into the country by way of exchange. Both travel and traffic advantageously pursued the canal until the birth of its legitimate successor, the railway. Upon the completion of the Boston and Lowell, and Lowell and Nashua roads the canal ceased to pay its operating expenses. In a few years it was discontinned, and is now nearly obliterated.
The elder Loammi Baldwin, who had been so zealous a friend and promoter of the Middlesex Canal, died in 1807, only a few years subsequent to its completion. He had been a member of the memorable Middlesex Convention of 1774, had fought at Lexington, and had subsequently com- manded a regiment in the army of the Revolution, the fragments of which he led at Trenton.
The second part of the programme -that for
turning the commerce of Western Massachusetts to her own seaboard - was now being actively agitated in commercial as well as in political circles. A new and important element was introduced. De Witt Clinton had inaugurated his magnificent scheme for a canal from the Hudson to Lake Erie, and the work was vigorously progressing. The people of Massachusetts could not shut their eyes to the danger that threatened when this avenue should be opened to commerce. The traffic of the West was felt to be a prize worth contending for even at that early day. They resolved to enter the lists ; but it was now no longer a question of a few miles of canal through a region highly favorable for its construction. Mountain ranges must be crossed, scientific problems solved, that rendered the enter- prise one which even the sanguine regarded with misgiving.
Half a century ago an engineer, now famous, came up the valley of the Deerfield with the pur- pose of conducting a canal over Hoosac Mountain. The river led him to the vertical eastern wall of the mountain, and there left him looking askance, no doubt, at its two thousand or more feet of forest- shagged rock. He ascended the gorge of the Deer- field to find himself at length in a deep depression, where the west branch of that stream and the north branch of Hoosac River, having their sources within a hundred rods of each other, flow down opposite sides of the mountain. To unite these streams was, indeed, feasible ; but the plan involved a system of locks and reservoirs too costly for the treasury of a state by no means opulent, and it was, moreover, at most, uncertain of furnishing an adequate supply of water for the proposed canal. The engineer, however, was not to be thus out-gen- eralled by the mountain ; he had still another idea.
Mr. Loammi Baldwin's sufficiently audacious idea was that Hoosac Mountain might be success- fully pierced by a tunnel, and the only obstacle in the way of uninterrupted water-navigation between Lake Erie and Massachusetts Bay be thus over- come. It was at this time that the opening of the Erie Canal, a work highly favored by Nature, was giving new vitality to projects of inland navigation, some of which had quietly slumbered since the Revolution. Among others, the scheme of a canal to connect the Merrimack with the Connecticut, for which surveys had been made, and an act of incorporation obtained in 1792, was again revived. It chanced that Governor Eustis, the executive of Massachusetts, had, while Minister to Holland,
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
been much interested in the complicated system of canals of that country. The enterprise in question rcecived his hearty advocacy and his official sup- port. A commission was appointed, to which Mr. Baldwin was attached as engineer, for the purpose of making a thorough recommoisance of the coun- try from Boston Harbor to the Hudson. The work was thoroughly performed, and the route, now followed by the tunnel line of railway, de- clared to be, beyond comparison, the most practi- cable and advantageous.
Mr. Baldwin's estimate of the probable cost of a tunnel through Hoosac Mountain was less than a million of dollars. General Simon Bernard, then chief of United States Engineers, computed the expense of a tunnel, twenty feet wide and thirteen and a half high, at about three hundred thousand dollars a inile ; the estimated length of the tunnel being four miles, and the route substantially that since adopted by the tunnel engineers. There can be no question that Mr. Baldwin's conception was a bold one. Not only was there no tunnel in ex- istence of such great length as he proposed, but in the limited knowledge of such stupendous public works then prevailing in this country, the project appeared, to the common apprehension, little short of folly. The cost of perforating Hoosac Moun- tain was, however, the greatest stumbling-block in the way of the original enterprise, which only con- templated an outlay of three millions from the Connecticut to the Hudson, or one sixth of the sum the state of Massachusetts has expended between Greenfield and the state line. An in- structive example of the way in which common opinion adjusts itself to great and novel ideas may be found in the fact that in less than two years the people of Berkshire were ardently and hope- fully discussing the feasibility of building a rail- way from Boston to Albany ; a scheme which Cap- tain Basil Hall, R. N., pronounced to be " mad- ness," precisely as Dr. Dionysius Lardner, a few years later, declared steam-navigation on the ocean " impracticable."
Before the projected canal to the Hudson had taken form the era of railways had dawned. In five years after the completion of the Erie Canal several steam-roads were under construction, one of which was destined forever to supersede the canal. It is to their development that the state owes its rapid advance in population, wealth, and prosperity.
Before leaving the subject of canals, mention should be made of that opened in 1792 around
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Pawtucket Falls, on the Merrimack. In this year Dudley A. Tyng, William Coombs, and others were incorporated as "The Proprietors of the Locks and Canals on Merrimack River." The distance to be overcome was one and one half miles. About five years were occupied in its construction. As an avenue of trade, it did not fulfil the expecta- tions of its projectors, being superseded by the Middlesex Canal ; but in the hands of Patrick T. Jackson and his associates it subsequently became the hydraulic power of the city of Lowell, and the primary cause of its vast manufacturing interests.
Several small canals were also constructed in Cambridge, subsequent to the erection of that town into a port of delivery, and to facilitate the entry and unloading of vessels. A full description of these may be found in the Middlesex Registry of Deeds.
So far as her inland commerce is concerned, Middlesex is the antechamber of Boston. Her great iron roads radiate like the fingers of an open hand. The railway system of the state, con- verging upon the metropolis, intersects the county in every direction, constituting a network of high- ways which has in a great measure replaced the common roads. Indeed, railways have come to be regarded as public thoroughfares, to be con- ducted for the interests of the population from which they derive support. The history of those railways first entering the county limits is also that of the first constructed in the state for public travel.
The Lowell Railroad owes its existence to the sagacity, boldness, and energy of a single man. We have already had occasion to name him in con- nection with the old canal around Pawtucket Falls, built for the purpose of improving the navigation of the Merrimack.
Patrick Tracy Jackson, the friend and associate of Francis Cabot Lowell, in his enterprise of es- tablishing cotton mannfacture at Waltham, was, in 1821, so fully convinced of the great possibilities of this industry that he was seeking a new location for its expansion. His attention was directed to Pawtucket Falls and to the almost forgotten canal. In conjunction with Nathan Appleton and Kirk Boott, Jackson immediately set to work buying up the shares of the canal and those farms contiguous to the falls on both sides of the river. His pro- ceedings being conducted with secrecy and de- spatch, both lands and water privilege were soon in his hands. A new company was formed of the
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CANALS AND RAILWAYS.
Waltham mill-proprietors and others, under the | Nashua and Lowell, chartered in 1836, and opened corporate name of the Merrimack Manufacturing to Nashına October 8, 1838, was until recently operated by the Lowell Company. It passes through Chelmsford and Tyngsborough. Company. It had a capital of $600,000, and was placed under the management of Kirk Boott. On the 1st of September, 1823, the first wheel of the Merrimack Company was set in motion. In 1825 three more mills were built.
For the transportation of the product of the mills to market, and for the supply of raw cotton and machinery for the mills, there was the Middle- sex Canal in summer, and in winter the common roads; for at this season the canal was solidly frozen. As the business of Lowell increased, the need of better and quicker means of transportation became more and more evident. With his habitual energy, Jackson set about solving the problem.
In Great Britain the movement to establish steam-railroads had just passed from the experi- mental stage. Roads were being constructed on which locomotives were to be used. But in the United States very little was known of the progress making there towards this radical change in the methods of travel and transportation. Without previous knowledge, with experience to be acquired, Jackson grappled with the novel and herculean undertaking of building a railway, on which loco- motives were to be used, from Lowell to Boston.
Jackson pursued his new design constantly, but with the deliberation of a man who appreciates the importance of a false step, and who has, more- over, everything to learn. To mature his plans, induce capitalists to join him, to master the scien- tific and practical problems presented by his own mind or suggested by the doubts of others, were the occupations to which he now gave himself up. In 1830 an act of incorporation was obtained. Sub- scriptions to the capital stock were made, more from faith in the man than in the undertaking. The road was prepared under conditions highly favorable to success. It was built for a double track, the grades reduced to a maximum of ten feet to the mile, sharp curves avoided. The whole work was constructed in the most substantial manner.
This line was opened to Lowell on the 24th of June, 1835. It passes through Somerville, Med- ford, Winchester, Woburn, Wilmington, Billerica, and Tewksbury into Lowell, being for its entire length of twenty-six miles wholly within the county. The Andover and Wilmington, chartered in 1833, now forming part of the Boston and Maine, was first a branch of the Lowell. The
Besides those enumerated, the Lowell leases and operates the following roads: Lowell and Lawrence, thirteen miles, opened in 1848, crossing the town of Tewksbury in Middlesex ; Salem and Lowell, sixteen miles, opened in 1850, entering the county in the town of North Reading, crossing the upper part of Wilmington, and uniting with the Lowell and Lawrence line in Tewksbury; Middlesex Cen- tral, leaving the main line in Somerville, traversing Arlington, Lexington, and Bedford to Concord. The Lowell also has the following branches : Wo- burn Branch from Winchester to Woburn Centre, Stoneham Brauch from East Woburn to Stoneham; Mystic, and Lawrence branches.
The Lowell, with its connections, forms one of the great routes to Montreal and the Dominion of Canada, to Lake Champlain, Ogdensburg, and the system of inland transportation to the West by the Great Lakes. Through Mr. Jackson's exer- tions many acres of useless marsh-land at the westerly part of Boston were reclaimed for the use of this and other corporations.
The Boston and Albany line is the outgrowth of two corporations, the Boston and Worcester and the Western Railroad. It is the most important of Massachusetts trunk routes, having a continu- ous line of its own from Boston to the Hudson, a distance of two hundred miles. This road enters the county in the city of Newton, to which it gives large facilities, touches Weston, where it crosses the Charles, traverses the town of Needham, in Norfolk, again enters the county in Natick, crosses the southerly portion of Framingham into Ash- land, and out of the county, thus intersecting its most densely populated section. We give a brief outline of its rise and progress.
In 1800 a line of stage-coaches made three trips a week between Boston and Worcester, taking an entire day for the journey of forty-four miles. At the same time, and for several years after, the only mode of transporting merchandise between these places was by baggage - wagons, which, in good weather, accomplished one journey per week. The projectors of the railway promised an incredulous public that passengers should make the entire journey in from three to four hours.
We ask the reader who is familiar with the rapid and interesting journey by rail from Boston to
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
Worcester, for a moment to take a backward glance at the same journey as performed by a most intelli- gent traveller only a little more than half a cen- tury ago. Let him institute a mental comparison between the populous and thriving cities and towns now thickly clustered along the line of the rail- way, with the " wild and thinly settled " appearance of the country which this traveller remarked.
" We left the hospitable city of Boston," he says, " with grateful hearts, and rode over the Mill-dam into the interior of the country. The horses were changed four times, generally in small villages ; Framingham and Westborough appeared to be the only ones of any importance. The country some- times seemed wild, and but thinly settled, though the state of Massachusetts is said to be the most populous in North America. We saw no grain, though in some places we observed Indian corn, and now and then some millet. Apple-orchards were abundant ; the trees hung so full of fruit that many of the boughs were broken. The apples are small and yellow, and are employed in preparing the favorite beverage called cider. We gradually ap- proached forests consisting of oak, chestnut, and elm trees. Sumach also occurs in some places, the bark of which is said to be excellent for tan- ning leather. There are evidently no forest regula- tions here, and the timber is very much neglected. The road was, for the greatest part, a good turnpike, and made in the German manner. We crossed several small rivers and rivulets on wooden bridges, which are very slight, though they are built with great waste of timber. The planks are not even nailed upon the beams, so that I began to be somewhat fearful, especially as the carriage drove rapidly over. About two miles from Worces- ter we crossed a lake called Guansiganog-pond 1 on a wooden bridge one fourth of a mile in lengthi. The banks of this lake are covered with wood, and present a very handsome appearance. On our way, we were overtaken by a considerable thunder- storm, which settled the dust and procured us a pleasant evening. We arrived at Worcester about seven o'clock, and alighted at an excellent tavern."
In this description of a journey of nearly or quite ten hours between the two places we scarcely recognize the ground now traversed by an express- train in an hour, nor the succession of towns which for a dozen iniles constitute in this direction the suburbs of Boston, and which seem to the traveller only a continuation of the city itself.
1 Quinsigamond.
The Boston and Worcester line was chartered in January, 1831, with a capital of $1,000,000. Work immediately began, under supervision of Colonel Fessenden as principal engineer. In August, 1833, the workmen began laying down the rails, on the first division, between Boston and Needham. On the 18th of April, 1834, the road was opened to Newton; in August trains were running to Needham, thirteen miles, four times each day. Here a line of stages connected with the railway, - an arrangement which permitted a citizen of Worcester to leave his home at six in the morning, arrive in Boston at noon, pass three or four hours in the city, and reach home at eight in the evening. By this time the managers had grown confident. They now promised a speed of twenty miles an hour on passenger trains.
In September the track reached Hopkinton; in November it was laid to Westborough; and in July, 1835, a train carrying three hundred people passed over the road to the terminus at Worcester. Two daily trains were run each way, making the distance in two and a half hours. The achieve- ment was considered a marvel.
At this time Worcester was a humble village of some 4,000 or 5,000 inhabitants, and Boston had a population of about 65,000. In five years Worces- ter advanced to 7,500 souls, a greater gain than she had shown in the previous forty years. During the same period Boston advanced to 93,000. Mid- dlesex made a gain in population of nearly thirty thousand between the years 1840 and 1850, or from 77,961 to 106,611, the rate of increase being most marked in those towns on the lines of railway then opened. Lowell, which had a population of 6,474 in 1830, had 20,796 in 1840. Newton and Woburn each showed an increase of fifty per cent during the same decade.
Twenty years later, alluding retrospectively to the history of this road, a writer gives the following information relative to its construction and the results accomplished : -
" The Company was weak in its resources, and credit and railway construction a novelty in Massa- chusetts. It is not surprising, therefore, that some errors were committed, -that inferior ties were used resting in trenches filled with stone; that a harrow road-bed was provided, scarcely wide enough for a single track ; an edge-rail of thirty-nine lbs. to the yard laid down; and sharp curves intro- duced to keep down the maximum gradient to thirty feet to the mile. In Boston, the dépôt
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