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Commonwealth Museum   Secretary of the Commonwealth William Francis Galvin
Commonwealth Museum Secretary of the Commonwealth William Francis Galvin

Virtual Tour Detail

Lowell: A Company Town

In 1821, Lowell's partners chose land along the Merrimack River at Chelmsford for his new Merrimack Manufacturing Company. This enterprise became the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, the nation's first company town.

By 1840, Lowell was the second largest city in the state, and the Merrimack River Valley the world's most industrialized region. Nine Lowell factories employed six thousand workers, mostly young women from the farms of Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire.