[1] See under LOWELL, JOHN.
LOWELL, JOHN (1743-1802), American jurist, was born in Newburyport,
Massachusetts, on the 17th of June 1743, and was a son of the Reverend
John Lowell, the first pastor of Newburyport, and a descendant of
Perceval Lowle or Lowell (1571-1665), who emigrated from Somersetshire
to Massachusetts Bay in 1639 and was the founder of the family in New
England. John Lowell graduated at Harvard in 1760, was admitted to the
bar in 1763, represented Newburyport (1776) and Boston (1778) in the
Massachusetts Assembly, was a member of the Massachusetts Constitutional
Convention of 1779-1780 and, as a member of the committee appointed to
draft a constitution, secured the insertion of the clause, "all men are
born free and equal," which was interpreted by the supreme court of the
state in 1783 as abolishing slavery in the state. In 1781-1783 he was a
member of the Continental Congress, which in 1782 made him a judge of
the court of appeals for admiralty cases; in 1784 he was one of the
commissioners from Massachusetts to settle the boundary line between
Massachusetts and New York; in 1789-1801 he was a judge of the U.S.
District Court of Massachusetts; and from 1801 until his death in
Roxbury on the 6th of May 1802 he was a justice of the U.S. Circuit
Court for the First Circuit (Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and
Rhode Island).
His son, JOHN LOWELL (1769-1840), graduated at Harvard in 1786, was
admitted to the bar in 1789 (like his father, before he was twenty years
old), and retired from active practice in 1803. He opposed French
influence and the policies of the Democratic party, writing many
spirited pamphlets (some signed "The Boston Rebel," some "The Roxbury
Farmer"), including: _The Antigallican_ (1797), _Remarks on the Hon. J.
Q. Adams's Review of Mr Ames's Works_ (1809), _New England Patriot,
being a Candid Comparison of the Principles and Conduct of the
Washington and Jefferson Administrations_ (1810), _Appeals to the People
on the Causes and Consequences of War with Great Britain_ (1811) and _Mr
Madison's War_ (1812). These pamphlets contain an extreme statement of
the anti-war party and defend impressment as a right of long standing.
After the war Lowell abandoned politics, and won for himself the title
of "the Columella of New England" by his interest in agriculture--he was
for many years president of the Massachusetts Agricultural Society. He
was a benefactor of the Boston Athenaeum and the Massachusetts General
Hospital.
Another son of the first John Lowell, FRANCIS CABOT LOWELL (1775-1817),
the founder in the United States of cotton manufacturing, was born in
Newburyport on the 7th of April 1775, graduated at Harvard in 1793,
became a merchant in Boston, and, during the war of 1812, with his
cousin (who was also his brother-in-law), Patrick Tracy Jackson, made
use of the knowledge of cotton-spinning gained by Lowell in England
(whither he had gone for his health in 1810) and devised a power loom.
Experiments were successfully carried on at Waltham in 1814. Lowell
worked hard to secure a protective tariff on cotton goods. The city of
Lowell, Massachusetts, was named in his honour. He died in Boston on the
10th of August 1817.
CHARLES LOWELL (1782-1861), brother of the last named, was born in
Boston, graduated at Harvard in 1800, studied law and then theology, and
after two years in Edinburgh and one year on the Continent was from 1806
until his death pastor of the West Congregational (Unitarian) Church of
Boston, a charge in which Cyrus A. Bartol was associated with him after
1837. Charles Lowell had a rare sweetness and charm, which reappeared in
his youngest son, James Russell Lowell (q.v.).
Francis Cabot Lowell's son, JOHN LOWELL (1799-1836), was born in Boston,
travelled in India and the East Indies on business in 1816 and 1817, in
1832 set out on a trip around the world, and on the 4th of March 1836
died in Bombay. By a will made, said Edward Everett, "on the top of a
palace of the Pharaohs," he left $237,000 to establish what is now known
as the Lowell Institute (q.v.).
See the first lecture delivered before the Institute, Edward Everett's
_A Memoir of Mr John Lowell, Jr._ (Boston, 1840).
A grandson of Francis Cabot Lowell, EDWARD JACKSON LOWELL (1845-1894),
graduated at Harvard in 1867, was admitted to the Suffolk county (Mass.)
bar in 1872, and practised law for a few years. He wrote _The Hessians
and the Other German Auxiliaries of Great Britain in the Revolutionary
War_ (1884), _The Eve of the French Revolution_ (1892) and the chapter,
"The United States of America 1775-1782: their Political Relations with
Europe," in vol. vii. (1888) of Winsor's _Narrative and Critical History
of America_.
LOWELL, a city and one of the county-seats (Cambridge being the other)
of Middlesex county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., situated in the N.E. part of
the county at the confluence of the Concord and Merrimack rivers, about
25 m. N.W. of Boston. Pop. (1890) 77,696; (1900) 94,969, of whom 40,974
were foreign-born (14,674 being French Canadian, 12,147 Irish, 4485
English Canadian, 4446 English, 1203 Greek, 1099 Scotch); (1910 census),
106,294. Lowell is served by the Boston & Maine and the New York, New
Haven & Hartford railways, and by inter-urban electric lines. The area
of Lowell is 14.1 sq. m., much the larger part of which is S. of the
Merrimack. The city is irregularly laid out. Its centre is Monument
Square, in Merrimack Street, where are a granite monument to the first
Northerners killed in the Civil War, Luther C. Ladd and A. O. Whitney
(both of Lowell), whose regiment was mobbed in Baltimore on the 19th of
April 1861 while marching to Washington; and a bronze figure of Victory
(after one by Rauch in the Valhalla at Ratisbon), commemorating the
Northern triumph in the Civil War. The Lowell textile school, opened in
1897, offers courses in cotton manufacturing, wool manufacturing,
designing, chemistry and dyeing, and textile engineering; evening
drawing schools and manual training in the public schools have
contributed to the high degree of technical perfection in the factories.
The power gained from the Pawtucket Falls in the Merrimack river has
long been found insufficient for these. A network of canals supplies
from 14,000 to 24,000 h.p.; and a small amount is also furnished by the
Concord river, but about 26,000 h.p. is supplied by steam. In factory
output ($46,879,212 in 1905; $41,202,984 in 1900) Lowell ranked fifth in
value in 1905 and fourth in 1900 among the cities of Massachusetts; more
than three-tenths of the total population are factory wage-earners, and
nearly 19 % of the population are in the cotton mills. Formerly Lowell
was called the "Spindle City" and the "Manchester of America," but it
was long ago surpassed in the manufacture of textiles by Fall River and
New Bedford: in 1905 the value of the cotton product of Lowell,
$19,340,925, was less than 60 % of the value of cotton goods made at
Fall River. Woollen goods made in Lowell in 1905 were valued at
$2,579,363; hosiery and knitted goods, at $3,816,964; worsted goods, at
$1,978,552. Carpets and textile machinery are allied manufactures of
importance. There are other factories for machinery, patent medicines,
boots and shoes, perfumery and cosmetics, hosiery and rubber heels.
Lowell was the home of the inventor of rubber heels, Humphrey
O'Sullivan.
The founders of Lowell were Patrick Tracy Jackson (1780-1847), Nathan
Appleton (1779-1861), Paul Moody (1779-1831) and the business manager
chosen by them, Kirk Boott (1790-1837). The opportunity for developing
water-power by the purchase of the canal around Pawtucket Falls
(chartered for navigation in 1792) led them to choose the adjacent
village of East Chelmsford as the site of their projected cotton mills;
they bought the Pawtucket canal, and incorporated in 1822 the Merrimack
Manufacturing Company; in 1823 the first cloth was actually made, and in
1826 a separate township was formed from part of Chelmsford and was
named in honour of Francis Cabot Lowell, who with Jackson had improved
Cartwright's power loom, and had planned the mills at Waltham. In 1836
Lowell was chartered as a city. Lowell annexed parts of Tewksbury in
1834, 1874, 1888 and 1906, and parts of Dracut in 1851, 1874 and 1879.
Up to 1840 the mill hands, with the exception of English dyers and
calico printers, were New England girls. The "corporation," as the
employers were called, provided from the first for the welfare of their
employees, and Lowell has always been notably free from labour
disturbances.
The character of the early employees of the mills, later largely
displaced by French Canadians and Irish, and by immigrants from
various parts of Europe, is clearly seen in the periodical, _The
Lowell Offering_, written and published by them in 1840-1845. This
monthly magazine, organized by the Rev. Abel Charles Thomas
(1807-1880), pastor of the First Universalist Church, was from October
1840 to March 1841 made up of articles prepared for some of the many
improvement circles or literary societies; it then became broader in
its scope, received more spontaneous contributions, and from October
1842 until December 1845 was edited by Harriot F. Curtis (1813-1889),
known by her pen name, "Mina Myrtle," and by Harriet Farley
(1817-1907), who became manager and proprietor, and published
selections from the _Offering_ under the titles _Shells from the
Strand of the Sea of Genius_ (1847) and _Mind among the Spindles_
(1849), with an introduction by Charles Knight. In 1854 she married
John Intaglio Donlevy (d. 1872). Famous contributors to the _Offering_
were Harriet Hanson (b. 1825) and Lucy Larcom (1824-1893). Harriet
Hanson wrote _Early Factory Labor in New England_ (1883) and _Loom and
Spindle_ (1898), an important contribution to the industrial and
social history of Lowell. She was prominent in the anti-slavery and
woman suffrage agitations in Massachusetts, and wrote _Massachusetts
in the Woman Suffrage Movement_ (1881). She married in 1848 William
Stevens Robinson (1818-1876), who wrote in 1856-1876 the political
essays signed "Warrington" for the _Springfield Republican_. Lucy
Larcom,[1] born in Beverly, came to Lowell in 1835, where her widowed
mother kept a "corporation" boarding-house, and where she became a
"doffer," changing bobbins in the mills. She wrote much, especially
for the _Offering_; became an ardent abolitionist and (in 1843) the
friend of Whittier; left Lowell in 1846, and taught for several years,
first in Illinois, and then in Beverly and Norton, Massachusetts. _An
Idyl of Work_ (1875) describes the life of the mills and _A New
England Girlhood_ (1889) is autobiographical; she wrote many stories
and poems, of which _Hannah Binding Shoes_ is best known.
Benjamin F. Butler was from boyhood a resident of Lowell, where he
began to practise law in 1841. James McNeill Whistler was born here in
1834, and in 1907 his birthplace in Worthen Street was purchased by
the Art Association to be used as its headquarters and as an art
museum and gallery; it was dedicated in 1908, and in the same year a
replica of Rodin's statue of Whistler was bought for the city.
See S. A. Drake, _History of Middlesex County_, 2, p. 53 et seq.
(Boston, 1880); _Illustrated History of Lowell, Massachusetts_
(Lowell, 1897); the books of Harriet H. Robinson and Lucy Larcom
already named as bearing on the industrial conditions of the city
between 1835 and 1850; and the famous description in the fourth
chapter of Dickens's _American Notes_.