|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 23
The year 1729 is memorable for the great earthquake which occurred on
October 29, and did considerable damage in the Merrimack valley.
Tewksbury was incorporated in 1734, its territory before having been
included in Billerica.
At the battle of Bunker Hill two companies of Chelmsford men were
present, one under command of Captain John Ford, the other under Captain
Benjamin Walker; and one company composed largely of Dracut men was
under Captain Peter Colburn.
[Illustration: FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, 1840.]
Captain Ford had served previously at the siege and capture of
Louisburg, in 1745. When the first man in his company fell at Bunker
Hill, an officer prevented a panic by singing Old Hundred. When closely
pressed by the British, and the ammunition had been exhausted, Captain
Colburn, on the point of retreating, threw a stone at the advancing
enemy and saw an officer fall from the blow.
Colonel Simeon Spaulding, of Chelmsford, was an active patriot during
the Revolution and did good service in the Provincial Congress.
During Shays' Rebellion, in 1786, a body of Chelmsford militia under
command of General Lincoln served in the western counties.
The people of Chelmsford, from the earliest settlement, gave every
encouragement to millers, lumbermen, mechanics, and traders, making
grants of land, and temporary exemption from taxation, to such as would
settle in their town. It became distinguished for its sawmills,
gristmills, and mechanics' shops of various kinds. Billerica, Dracut,
and Tewksbury gave like encouragement. About the time of the Revolution
a sawmill was built below Pawtucket Falls and owned by Judge John Tyng.
[Illustration: PAIGE-STREET FREEWILL BAPTIST CHURCH, 1840.]
Toward the close of the last century the lumbering industry on the
Merrimack grew into prominence; and, in 1792, Dudley A. Tyng, William
Coombs, and others, of Newburyport, were incorporated as "The
Proprietors of the Locks and Canals on Merrimack River." This canal,
which was demanded for the safe conduct of rafts by the Falls, was
completed in 1797, at an expense of fifty thousand dollars. The fall of
thirty-two feet was passed by four sets of locks.
The first bridge across the Merrimack was built, in 1792, by Parker
Varnum and associates; the Concord had been bridged some twenty years
earlier.
[Illustration: DAM AT PAWTUCKET FALLS.]
In 1793, the proprietors of the Middlesex Canal were incorporated.
Loammi Baldwin, of Woburn, superintended the construction. The canal
began at the Merrimack, about a mile above Pawtucket Falls, extended
south by east thirty-one miles, and terminated at Charlestown. It was
twenty-four feet wide and four feet deep and was fed by the Concord
River. It cost $700,000, and was completed in 1804,--the first canal
in the United States opened for the transportation of passengers and
merchandise. For forty years it was the outlet of the whole Merrimack
valley north of Pawtucket Falls.
The first boat voyage from Boston, by the Middlesex Canal and the
Merrimack River, to Concord, New Hampshire, was made in 1814; the first
steamboat from Boston reached Concord in 1819.
The competition of the Middlesex Canal ruined the Pawtucket Canal, as it
in turn, in after years, was ruined by the Boston and Lowell Railroad.
Navigation finally ceased on its waters in 1853, since which date its
channel has been filling up and its banks have been falling away.
In 1801, Moses Hale, whose father had long before started a fulling-mill
in Dracut, established a carding-mill on River Meadow Brook,--the first
enterprise of the kind in Middlesex County.
In 1805, the bridge across the Merrimack was demolished and a new bridge
with stone piers and abutments was constructed. It was a toll-bridge as
late as 1860.
The second war with England stimulated manufacturing enterprises
throughout the United States; and several were started, depending upon
the water-power of the Concord River. In 1813, Captain Phineas Whiting
and Major Josiah Fletcher erected a wooden cotton-mill on the site of
the Middlesex Company's mills, and were successful in their enterprise.
John Golding, in the same neighborhood, was not so fortunate.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|