Beginnings
In the early 19th century, Francis Cabot Lowell and his friends and colleagues established in Waltham, Massachusetts the Boston Manufacturing Company - the first integrated textile mill in the United States. After Lowell's death in 1817, his partners searched for a new location with greater waterpower to expand textile production and add calico printing. In 1821 they purchased property adjoining the Pawtucket Falls on the Merrimack River and in 1823 the Merrimack Manufacturing Company began producing cotton cloth in the village of East Chelmsford. In 1826, the area was incorporated as the town of Lowell, Massachusetts, named in honor of Francis Cabot Lowell.
Before the railroad, there were several ways of moving goods between Lowell and Boston. The Middlesex Canal, opened in 1804, linked Concord, New Hampshire and Boston, Massachusetts was usable except during the winter months. Stagecoaches ran on the road between Boston and Lowell. Large horse-drawn wagons carried freight. These sufficed for some time, but as Lowell grew and more industrialists built mills there, problems with both modes soon overwhelmed them.
The canal was a very efficient way of moving large amounts of heavy goods cheaply and with minimal labor. Unfortunately, the canal would freeze in the winter and the towpath was muddy in spring and late fall. This made it impractical for a burgeoning mill town that needed year-round freight transportation.
Stagecoaches provided the passenger aspect of the transport, moving 100 to 120 passengers per day. There were six stagecoaches in operation at the time of the building of the railroad, for a total of 39 fully loaded round trips per week. This was sufficient passenger service for people who had to make an occasional trip but was much too expensive for daily use or what we would now call commuters.
One of the first railroads in North America was the Granite Railroad in nearby Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1826. It was a 3-mile (5 km), horse-powered railroad, built to move large granite stones from the quarries in Quincy to the Neponset River in Milton. As was believed to be the most sturdy method at the time, it was built on a deep foundation of granite, setting a precedent for all railroads that could afford it.
The investors in the Lowell textile companies decided they needed to do something about their transportation situation. They looked toward the railroad in England for inspiration. A railroad could run year round, was expandable with as many tracks as they might need, and could use the new locomotives that were being highly praised in England.
Read more about this topic: Boston And Lowell Railroad
Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:
“These beginnings of commerce on a lake in the wilderness are very interesting,—these larger white birds that come to keep company with the gulls.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“[Many artists], even the greatest ones, are not sure of their own existence. So they search for proof, they judge, they condemn. It strengthens them, it is the beginnings of existence. They are alone!”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The frantic search of five-year-olds for friends can thus be seen to forecast the beginnings of a basic shift in the parent-child relationship, a shift which will occur gradually over many long years, and in which a child needs not only the support of child allies engaged in the same struggle but also the understanding of his parents.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)