History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 3

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed. cn
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1226

USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II > Part 3

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study, and went to England, where he qualified him- sclf to enter the British Army as a civil engineer. At the age of twenty-one years he received a commission in the British Army and subsequently was made lieutenant in the Eighty-fifth Light Infantry and with this regiment took part in the Peninsular Can- paign under Wellington, landing in Spain in August, 1813.

Mr. Boott served till the close of the campaign, en- gaging in the capture of San Sabastian, in the battles of the Nieve and the Nivelle, in the passage of the Garonne and in the siege of Bayonne. Rev. Geo. R. Gleig, once the chaplain-general of the British Army, writes in 1887, when in the ninety-first year of his age, that he remembers Mr. Boott as his comrade in that campaign, and as a " remarkably good-looking man, a gallant soldier and a great favorite in the corps."

At the close of the wars of Napoleon the Eighty- fifth Regiment was ordered to America to take part in the War of 1812. Mr. Boott, being by birth an American, refused to bear arms against his native land.

His regiment, however, went to America, took part in the engagements near the city of Washington and in the battle of New Orleans. Mr. Boott, having visited America, returned to England and studied engineering at the Military Academy at Sandhurst, before finally resigning his commission.

Before returning to America Mr. Boott married an English lady, who belonged to a family of very high professional standing, and whom the Rev. Dr. Edson calls " an excellent and devout woman, the very beau-ideal of an English lady." On coming to Bos- ton he engaged with two brothers in mercantile pur- suits, which, however, were attended with very heavy losses. So that when his friend, Patrick T. Jackson, proposed to him to become the agent of the Merri- mack Mills, in Lowell, he promptly accepted the po- sition and came to East Chelmsford (now Lowell) in April, 1822, the year in which the first mill was erected.

And here, for fifteen years, Mr. Boott found a field for the exercise of his powers such as few men have enjoy- ed, and which few men possess the ability to occupy. He was guided by no precedent. Up to this time manu- factures in America had been carried on in small, de- tached establishments, managed by the owners of the property ; but now the great experiment was to to be tried of so managing the affairs of great joint-stock com- panies as to yield to the owners a satisfactory profit. To do this demanded a man of original commanding intellect, of indomitable courage and of iron will. Such a man was Mr. Boott. For such a position his natural ability and his military experience had ad- mirably qualified him.

He entered upon his task with resolute courage and conscientious devotion to duty. His life was an in- tense life, every hour bringing its varied and urgent

LOWELL.

duties. He was agent of the Merrimack Mills, sup- erintendent of the Print Works, agent of the Propri- etors of Locks and Canals. He bargained for the construction of mills and had the general oversiglit of the work.

His pen and pencil were busy upon drawings and plans for new structures. He was arbiter in a thousand transactions. He interested himself in the public schools and iu municipal affairs. In the re- sponsive services of the Sabbath worship his voice rose above the rest, and he was everywhere acknowl- edged as the leading, guiding master spirit.

He was not selfish and grasping. Though he lived liberally and in an elegant home, he was very far from being a wealthy man.

It is not strange that one whose mind was so deep- ly absorbed and so heavily burdened with responsibili- ties should sometimes, by the military brevity of his decisions, offend the sensitiveness of other men. He was almost overwhelmed with cares. In one of his letters, in which he refers to an unwise business transaction of a friend, he says, "I am almost wor- ried out. Since this unhappy disclosure I get neither sleep nor rest."

How far his excess of cares affected .his physical condition it is impossible to tell, but for several of the last years of his life his friends observed the signs of declining healtlı. At length, on the 11th of April, 1837, as he sat in his chaise, which stood in the street near the Merrimack House, where he had been conversing with a friend, he instantaneously died and fell from his chaise to the ground. He was cut off in the prime of his manhood, in the forty- seventh year of his age. His death left a vacancy which could not be filled. Of his family, the wife of Charles A. Welch, Esq., of Boston, and Mrs. Eliza Boott, who has resided in or near London, are the only survivors.

But wealth and character and high executive abil- ity were not alone sufficient to set in motion the ten thonsand looms and wheels and the innumerable spindles of the new enterprise. There was needed also a man of inventive genius, like Hiram of old, whom "Solomon fetched out of Tyre," and who was " filled with wisdom and understanding and cunning." Such a man was PAUL MOODY, whom the distinguished men mentioned above brought to their aid.

Mr. Moody was born in Newbury, Mass., May 23, 1779. His father was a man of much influence in the town, and was known as "Capt. Paul Moody." Two of his brothers graduated from Dartmouth Col- lege. His original design of living a farmer's life was changed by the discovery that he was the possessor of a genius for mechanical invention of no ordinary character. By degrees his talents became so well known that his aid was sought in positions of high responsibility. In such positions he had been em- ployed in the Wool & Cotton Manufacturing Com- pany in Amesbury, and the Boston Manufacturing

Company in Waltham. He gained a distinguished name as the inventor of machinery for the manufac- ture of cotton. He invented the winding-frame, a new dressing-machine, the substitution of soap-stone rollers for iron rollers, the " method of spinning yarn for filling directly on the bobbin for the shuttle," the filling-frame, the double speeder, a new " governor," the use of the "dead spindle," aud various other devices which gave speed and completeness to the work of manufacturing cottou. His inventive mind was the auimating spirit of the cotton-mill. His presence and genius were invaluable factors in the successful operatious of the new enterprise. Besides being a man of great inventive genius he was known as an ardent and influential advocate of temperance among the operatives in the mills, an exemplary Christian, and a loving husband and father. He died in July, 1831, at the age of fifty-two years. Of this event Dr. Edson, in the funeral sermon delivered July 10, 1831, says : "His death [has] produced a greater sensatiou than any other event that has tran- spired in this town. He died in the full strength of body, in the very vigor of age and constitution."

Subordinate to these five distinguished leaders in the enterprise, there were others of whom we should also make mention as we pass.

EZRA WORTHEN was born in Amesbury, Massa- chusetts, February 11, 1781. He was the son of a ship-builder, and after securing a common-school edu- cation he took up his father's trade. A fellow-work- man and himself constructed a small vessel on their own account. Leaving his trade, he turned his atten- tion to the manufacture of woolen goods. In com- pany with three partners, he erected in Amesbury a brick mill, fifty feet by thirty-two feet, for the manu- facture of broadcloth. In 1814 he accepted the invi- tation of the Boston Manufacturing Company to take charge of their machine-shop in Walthamn. After a service of eight years in Waltham he was appointed in 1822 the first agent of the Merrimack Manufactur- ing Company, the earliest of the great Lowell com- panies. He entered upon his duties with character- istic energy and zeal. Soon appeared indications of declining health. He often suffered paroxysms of pain. He was a man of an excitable temperament, and his physicians warned him of approaching danger. On June 18, 1824, while engaged in showing an awk- ward workman how he should nse his shovel, he sud- denly fell and died.

He was a man of quick wit, bright intelligence and . kindly, genial nature. He had served the Merrimack Company only two years, when he was cut down in the prime of early manhood. His age was forty three years. It was Mr. Worthen who had the honor of being the first to suggest East Chelmsford and Paw- tucket Falls as the place for the new city.

And here let us stop to observe how short were the lives of the six distinguished men who have just occu- pied our attention. Only one of them reached the

HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

allotted three-score years and ten. Mr. Appleton lived eighty-two years, Mr. Jackson sixty-seven years, Mr. Moody fifty-two years, Mr. Boott forty-seven years, Mr. Worthen forty-three years, and Mr. Lowell forty-two years. Perhaps the assumption of so great responsibilities was too severe a tax upon the human brain. The longevity of many of the ablest English statesmen, however, does not seem to warrant such a conclusion.

JOHN AMORY LOWELL was born November 11, 1798. He was nephew and son-in-law of Francis C. Lowell, for whom our city was named. He graduated from Harvard College at the age of sixteen years. During the management of Kirk Boott he made most of the purchases of materials in Boston for the Merri- mack Company. In 1835 he built the Boott Mills, of which he was the treasurer for thirteen years. He also built the Massachusetts Mills in 1839, and served as treasurer. Mr. Appleton says of him: "There is no man whose beneficial influence in establishing salutary regulations in relation to this manufacture, exceeded that of Mr. John Amory Lowell." Few men have ever combined, to so remarkable a degree, rare classical scholarship and great business capacity. To these were added a brave and fearless spirit, modesty and generosity. His long life was one of un- tiring industry. He died October 31, 1881, at the age of eighty-three years.

John W. Boott, eldest brother of Kirk Boott, was a merchant in Boston in company with the elder Kirk Boott, and afterwards with John A. Lowell, the nephew aud son-in-law of Francis C. Lowell. He joined his fortunes with those of his brother Kirk, and took ninety of the 600 shares in the company first organized.

It may be best to state at this point that of these 600 shares Kirk Boott, Jr., took 90, John W. Boott 90, Nathan Appleton 180, Patrick T. Jack- son 180, and Paul Moody 60. Others soon afterwards became shareholders.

Having briefly shown who the founders of our city were, we shall with greater interest and more intelli- gently follow them in their united labor in establish- ing our great manufacturing industries. Henceforth their histories blend together.

The city of Lowell is fortunate in having the limits of its history perfectly defined. No mist of doubt beclouds its early days. Unlike some cities of the ancient world, it was built, not by divine, but by human hands. The walls of Thebes arose in obedi- ence to the tones of Amphion's golden lyre, but the structures of Lowell are the work of the mason's trowel and the Irishman's pickaxe, hod and shovel. We know the history of the founders. Their very thoughts have been recorded. The past is secure, nor will the present and the future go unrecorded.

The germ of the history of the great manufacturing industries of Lowell is to be found in the sojourn of Francis Cabot Lowell in England and Scotland from

1810 to 1813. It was during these years that his mind became inspired with the patriotic purpose of securing for his own country the inestimable ad van- tage of being the manufacturer of its own cotton fabrics. No doubt he also thought of the wealth which he supposed would acrue to those who engaged in the undertaking. He would have been more than human if he did not. I cannot do better at this point than to quote the language of the Hon. Nathan Appleton : " My connection with the cotton manu- factures takes date from the year 1811, when I met my friend, Mr. Francis C. Lowell, at Edinburgh, where he had been passing some time with his family. We had frequent conversations on the subject of the cotton manufacture, and he informed me that he had determined, before his return to America, to visit Manchester for the purpose of obtaining all possible information on the subject, with a view to the intro- duction of the improved manufacture in the United States. I urged him to do so, and promised him my co-operation." And here it will not be amiss briefly to show what there was in the manufactures of England and Scotland that so much attracted the attention of Mr. Lowell.

It has been said that the birthplace of cotton man- ufacture was India, but that its second birthplace was England. India manufactured, indeed, but its im- plements were rude and its processes were slow. England manufactured, and its implements were the most wonderful products of human skill, and its pro- cesses swift as the glance of the eye. This wonderful rapidity was a new revelation to the world. It had all come within one generation. A new era had dawned-the era of invention. Much had long since been done to please the taste of man, now something is to be done to supply the comforts and relieve the hardships of his life. Instead of slavishly supplying power from his own muscles, he is hereafter to direct the power which nature has put into his hands. It seems inexplicable to human reason that painting, sculpture, architecture, eloquence and poetry, which demand the subtlest powers of the intellect, should have reached their perfection two thousand years ago, while the development of the useful arts, upon which so much of the happiness and comfort of mau- kind depend, has lingered on through ages of delay. How wonderful it is that the genius which could see an Apollo Belvidere in a shapeless block of marble, could devise no improvement on the distaff' and the spindle !

These two simple implements and the one-thread spinning-wheel had had undisputed sway for unnum- bered years. Far back in the ages of mythology the Parcæ spun from the distaff the thread of human life. In the days of Solomon the virtuous woman laid her hands to the spindle and her hands hold the distaff, and even the writer well remembers that, in his boy- hood, in the house of his grandparents, the rude and cumbrous hand-loom filled the corner of the room,

LOWELL.

while the small, foot-turned spinning-wheel stood before the fire.

One of our old residents, Mr. Daniel Knapp, gives us the following account of his early years : " In the spring of 1814 my parents were young laboring people, with five small children, the oldest not eleven years old. We had cotton brought to our house by the bale, to pick to pieces and get ont the seeds and dirt. We children had to pick so many pounds per day as a stint. We had a whipping-machine, made fonr-square, and, about three feet from the floor, was a bed-cord run across from knob to knob, near together, on which we put a parcel of cotton, and, with two whip-sticks, we lightened it up and got ont the dirt and made it ready for the card. My mother was carrying ou the bleach- ing husiness at this time. There was no chemical process. The bright sun, drying up the water, did the bleaching. This was the mode of bleaching at this time."

This wonderful change attracted the attention and admiration of Mr. Lowell. About 1760 the era of invention had begun, though as early as 1738 John Kay had invented a method of throwing the shuttle which enabled the weaver to do twice as much work as hefore. The shuttle thus impelled was called the fly shuttle. But this invention was seldom used until 1760. In 1760 Robert, the son of John Kay, invented the drop-box, which enabled the weaver to employ different colors in the same web. John Wyatt had. in 1738, invented the method of spinning by rollers, Hargreaves invented the carding-machine in 1760, and the spinning-jenny in 1764. In 1768 Arkwright first set up his spinning-frame, and then followed, in 1775, the invention of the mule by Samuel Crompton. By this machine were produced the finer qualities of thread. It superseded the jenny. So wonderful are its possibilities that more than a thousand threads may he spun by one machine at the same time, and one workman can manage two machines. In 1785 Cartwright exhibited his first power-toom. I need not speak of other inventions or of the various devices for the perfection of cotton manufacture which at- tracted the inquisitive mind of Mr. Lowell.

Upon his return, in 1813, he entered upon the work of doing in America what he had seen accomplished in the Old World. He enlisted his brother-in-law, Patrick T. Jackson, as his associate, who had been driven from his mercantile business by the war, and who agreed to give up all other business and take the management of the enterprise. The partners purchased a water-power on the Charles River in Waltham (Bemis' paper-mill), and obtained an act of incorporation. Most of the stock of this incorporated company was taken by Messrs. Lowell & Jackson. The services of Paul Moody, whose skill as a mechanic was well known, were secured.

Up to this time the power-loom had never been used in America. Mr. Lowell was unable to procure drawings of this machine in Europe, and he resolved

to make a machine of his own. He shut himself up in the upper room of a store in Broad Street, in Bos- ton, and, with a frame already wasted with disease, he experimented for several months, employing a man to turn the crank.

At length, after the new mill was erected in Walt- ham, and other machinery was set up, Mr. Lowell set in motion his improved power-loom, and, for the first time, invited his friend, Nathan Appleton, to witness its operation. Mr. Appleton says in his account of this examination of this machine: "I well recollect the state of admiration and satisfaction with which we sat by the hour watching the beautiful movements of this new and wonderful machine, destined, as it was, to change the character of all textile industry. This was in the autumn of 1814." With the skillful aid of Mr. Moody other improvements were made. The efficiency of Horrock's dressing-machine was more than donbled. The double speeder was greatly in- proved. "Spinning on throstle spindles and the spin- ning of filling directly on the cops, without the pro- cess of winding," was introduced.

Of this latter improvement, a pleasant anecdote is told. I give it in Mr. Appleton's language : "Mr. Shepard, of Taunton, had a patent for a winding- machine, which was considered the best extant. Mr. Lowell was chaffering with him about purchasing the right of using them on a large scale at some re- duction from the price named. Mr. Shepard re- fnsed, saying, 'You must have them ; you cannot do without them, as you know, Mr. Moody.' Mr. Moody replied : 'I am just thinking that I can spin the cops direct npon the bobbin.' 'You be hanged !' said Mr. Shepard ; 'well, I accept your offer.' ' No,' said Mr. Lowell, 'it is too late.' A new-born thought had sprung forth from Mr. Moody's inventive mind, and he had no more nse for Mr. Shepard's winding- machine."

The enterprise was now an assured success. The capital of $400,000 was soon taken up and new water- powers near Watertown were purchased.

In the War of 1812, when British manufactures were excluded from our markets, the manufacture of cotton goods was greatly increased, but the effect of the peace in 1815 was to bring the American manu- factures into ruinons competition with those of England. The new American mills must have the protection of a tariff, or every spindle must cease to revolve. Mr. Lowell went to Washington and earnestly urged upon Congressmen the necessity of protection. At length Mr. Lowndes and Mr. Cal- houn were bronght to support the minimum duty of 6} cents per square yard, and the measure was carried. The tariff, together with the introduction of the power-loom, proved sufficiently protective. Who could then have believed that the same grade of cotton cloth which sold for thirty cents per yard would be sold in 1843 at only six cents ?

And here, five years before the mills in Lowell were

HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

started, the "informing soul " of the enterprise dis- appears from the scene. Mr. Lowell died in 1817, at the age of only forty-two years.

We should add in passing that it was the original design of the founders of our American manufac- tnres to start at Waltham only a weaving-mill and to buy their yarn of others. In the early days of the cotton industry no one thought of turning cotton to cloth in the same mill. Weaving was done here, and spinning there. It was a new thought, when the loom was set up in Waltham, also to put in the spiudle.

These men believed that the only profitable way to make cotton manufacturing successful was by joint- stock companies with large capitals. As long as the prices of goods were high and competition did not demand a change, these companies were remarkably successful. High salaries were paid to treasurers and agents and fortune smiled on the stockholders. But a change has come. Priccs are extremely low, com- petition is eager, and it begins to be a question whether, in order to successful cotton manufacture, it will not become necessary for individual owners to run their own mills and dispense with high salaries and too liberal a usc of money. Rigid economy seems to be the only means of sccuring fair profits. Joint-stock companies are on trial.

We should fail to do justice to the memory of the noble men who inaugurated this great enterprise if we did not refer to their wise foresight in carefully providing for the moral and religious welfare of the operatives. In this beneficent work Francis C. Lowell had been the leading spirit. John A. Lowell once said of him that " nature had designed him for a statesman, but fortune had made him a merchant." The forecasting wisdom, the broad moral views, the deep foundation on which all his plans for good were laid, reveal the evident traits of statesmanship. "In England and on the continent the operatives in the mills were sordid, vicious and every way degraded." He determined that it should not be so here, and therefore built boarding-houses for the operatives and put them under the care of matrons selected for that purpose. He paid pew taxes in churches for them. He instituted schools and used every means to main- tain in the daughters of the countrymen, who had entered the mills, all the simplicity and purity of their rural homes.

It is not pleasant to confess that it has been found difficult, after the lapse of more than sixty years, fully to maintain this high moral tone. But the fact that it was maintained so long as the operatives were of pure New England birth does the highest honor to the founders of our great manufactories.

The managers of onr mills have sometimes found it impossible to employ a number of American girls sufficient for the demands for help. And so the for- eigner began to be employed. But when the foreign girl came, the Yankee girl departed. At the present

time a Yankee girl, born and bred among the New England hills, is rarely seen in our mills.

We come now to the introduction of cotton manu- facture in the city of Lowell. The insufficiency of the water-power in Waltham demanded that a new site should be sought where cotton-manufacturing might be conducted on a magnificent scale. It is a very interesting fact that the history of the selection of the spot on which Lowell stands for that site is minutely known. The Rev. Dr. Edson, first rector of St. Anne's Church, was fully acquainted with all the facts, and in 1843 he kindly wrote them out for preservation in the archives of the "Old Residents' Historical Association." I can give but a brief ab- stract of his interesting narrative.

The proprietors of the Boston Manufacturing Com- pany at Waltham, anxious to extend their profitable operations, in the winter of 1821-2, were in search of a site for erecting new mills. In this search Mr. Paul Moody, who was in their employ at Waltham, became interested. On one occasion Mr. Moody took his wife and daughter in his chaise, and went to Bradford, Mass., for the purpose of visiting two of his children who were in Bradford Academy, and also to meet other gentlemen to examine water privileges in the vicinity of that town. The day was rainy, and the gentlemen did not appear. The next day, with his family, he rode to Amesbury, where he met his old associate, Mr. Ezra Worthen, who, when he learned the object of his search, said: "Why don't you go up to Pawtucket Falls? There is a power there worth ten times as much as you will find any- where else." Mr. Moody and Mr. Worthen went up to Pawtucket, examining Hunt's Falls on their way, and, taking dinner at the tavern of Mr. Jonathan Tyler. Pawtucket Falls were examined, and they re- turned to their respective homes.

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History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 3

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed. cn Publication date: 1890 Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1226

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed. cn
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1226