Native Americans and Early Settlement

Industrialization
Case Studies & Video Clips

Cultural Views of the River

River as Sink and Sewer

River for Health and Recreation

Neighborhoods

 

---

History: Industrialization

Industrialization - Textiles

The first major textile factory on the Concord River was constructed in 1813 and acquired five years later by Thomas Hurd.

The Middlesex Mills (left) began in 1836 and was the largest woolen mill on the Concord River.

High Water Mark

The early 1880s saw the largest number of textile firms operating along the Concord River in Lowell.  These firms included the Belvidere Woolen Manufacturing Company’s factories at  Howe Street and Lawrence Street; John Holt’s bunting mills at Davidson Street; the Chase Mills, L. W. Faulkner & Sons Mills, and the Stirling Mills along the Wamesit Canal; William Walker & Company at Massic Falls; the United States Bunting Company at the foot of Crosby Street on the Wamesit Power Company; and the adjacent George Naylor carpet mills.  While the smaller concerns employed 20 to 40 workers, the larger of these mills had 150 to 200 employees.  Additionally the large Middlesex Company’s mills and the Lowell Bleachery, located respectively on the Concord and on Hale’s Brook, employed hundreds of workers.  Together the Concord River textile mills provided as many as 2,000 jobs.

The Lowell Bleachery is pictured in this 1850 engraving .

This Lowell Bleachery label is one of the few remnants from this company that operated for nearly 100 years along Hale’s Brook.  Courtesy the American Textile History Museum.

The Long Decline
By the early 1900s a number of the smaller companies from the 1880s were no longer in business, and the Faulkner Mills, which became one of the larger concerns when it took over the Chase Mills, was itself acquired by the giant American Woolen Company.   Competition from southern mills -- initially within the market for plain cotton fabrics and then spreading into woolen goods -- became increasingly acute by the 1920s.  Nevertheless, companies along the Concord River that engaged in the production of niche goods, such as fine worsteds and bunting cloth, successfully competed in the larger textile market well into the 20th century.  

The nation’s largest woolen and worsted manufacture, the American Woolen Company, acquired the Faulkner Mill in 1898 and operated it as the Bay State Mills for nearly three decades.

Although certain niche producers of textile goods, such as the worsteds, remained relatively profitable, by the late 1920s, the majority of New England’s textile manufacturing companies were experiencing severe financial losses and many mills began shutting down permanently.  Along the Concord River, the American Woolen Company’s Bay State Mill closed in 1932, and its large brick factory building was subsequently demolished.

The United States Worsted Company operated the Musketaquid Mills from 1909 until 1928. The factory was originally erected in 1909 by Lowell’s Edwin J. Hylan, who was associated with the New England Bunting Company, but he immediately sold it to the worsted manufacturer.

Another large concern, the United States Worsted Company, closed its Musketaquid Mills on Howe Street.  A few specialty producers, including the Waterhead Mills of English immigrants and brothers Otto and William Hockmeyer, remained in operation into the 1950s.  Nevertheless, the 1930s proved to be the end for many of the city’s notable textile companies, including the Lowell Bleachery and the Middlesex Mills, the two largest concerns along the Concord River.

This recently produced aerial view of Wamesit Falls and the Wamesit Canal shows the remnants of the Hockmeyer family’s Waterhead Mills, where workers finished corduroy and velveteens until the 1950s.

Hear corporate executive Richard Satin, President of Bradford Industries, discuss the challenges facing Lowell manufacturers today.