Lawrence History Timeline

1800-1840:
Boston merchants involved in international trade evolved into
manufacturers through development of textile communities powered largely by water.

1830s:
Daniel Saunders begins to purchase strips of land on either side of the Merrimack River from Dracut to what is now Lawrence in order to gain control of water power rights.
Saunders, Underground Railroad & Orange Trees

1844 Early Map of Lawrence Area
1844 Map

1845:
Essex Company formed by Boston merchants turned manufacturers to encompass land purchased by Daniel Saunders.
Company Charter calls for building a dam and canals for manufacturing purposes.
Requires establishment of fishways to permit fish to swim upstream beyond the dam.
Abbot Lawrence invests most money to project.
Other investors include Nathan Appleton, Patrick Tracy Jackson, Amos Lawrence, Samuel Lawrence and other interlocked Boston merchants become manufacturers.
Hired , Charles Storrow as agent and chief engineer.
*Irish begin large influx to “new town on the Merrimack”
*First schools opened
*Population 104
Essex Company Collection

1847: Lawrence incorporated as Town,.
-Took 3 ½ sq. miles from Methuen and 2 ½ sq. miles from Andover.
-Named after one or all members of the Lawrence family.
History of Development of Lawrence
More history of City Development

1848:Great Stone Dam completed. Current photos and additional history

1849:High School begins.
-North Canal completed.
-First mills on-line.

1850: Population 8,358
Town of Lawrence

1853: Lawrence chartered as City

1854: Small riot between Irish and native born.
Part of the larger statewide sweep by the anti-immigrant “Know-nothing” party in 1855.

1857: National Financial Crash. Particularly bad in Lawrence because of embezzlement by Samuel Lawrence.
Bay State Mills, Pemberton Mill, Lawrence Machine Shop all went bankrupt.

1860: Collapse and fire of Pemberton Mill,
-Kills 88, maiming hundreds, and depriving hundreds of families of income. International attention.
-Enflames debate between North and South on comparative working conditions of southern slaves and northern factory workers.
-Population 17,639. Foreign born 42%
Information on the Pemberton Mill Collapse.
Victims' gravestone story in Tribune

1861-64:Civil War
*Lawrence manages to get by.
-Lowell closed most of its factories to retrofit during War, putting 11,000 out of work.
-Lawrence manufacturers had stockpiled cotton.
-Also featured mills that processed woolen textiles.

- Arthur Schuyler, Lawrence resident, joins the Mass 54th Colored Regiment and survives the war.

1860s: German and French-Canadian populations grow
Turn Verein Story

1870: Population 28,921

1870s: Hiram Mills, chief engineer of the Essex Company, creates the Experimental Station to treat water and sewage.
Station is then turned over to the State .
Mills becomes a member of the State Board of Health.

Oliver School Class, c 1875-1880

1880:Population 39,151

1882:Work begins to straighten the Spicket River
-General Strike at Central Pacific Mill
-First Irish mayor, John Breen, elected
Essex Co Spicket River Engineering Project

1890:Population 44,654. Foreign born 45%.

1890s Massive influx of southern, eastern European and Middle Eastern immigrants

1891: Because of severe Typhoid epidemic, work begins on state-of –the-art slow sand filter for water treatment based on Hiram Mills’ work on purifying water at the Lawrence Experiment Station.

1892: Water tower and reservoir completed.
The rate of Typhoid immediately reduced dramatically.
Public Health in Lawrence

1899 American Woolen Company established.
Washington Mills ~ American Woolen Company

1900:Population 62,559
Despite the documented problems in the City, a very rich cultural life also was taking place. Cultural Exhibit

1909:
Venerini Sisters come to Lawrence

1910:Population 85,892. Foreign born 48%
Immigration Lawyer, Alice O'Connor.

1911: Lawrence Survey published, detailing overcrowding, working conditions and contamination as causes for high rates of disease and death among Lawrence residents living in poverty.

Lawrence Survey

1912: Great Strike of 1912 (sometimes called Bread and Roses Strike).
Workers of diverse ethnic groups and languages struck for three months. In the short-term they won.
Of greatest importance were the U.S. Congressional Hearings afterward which called national attention to the conditions of workers, especially of children. It contributed to changes in the Federal laws regarding child labor.
Jim Beauchsne speaks on WGBH about Strike,
Strike Victim, John Ramey
More information
Bread and Roses Festival
Mass Moments

1914-30s:
-World War 1
WWI casualty, Alec Bern Bruce
-Immigrant Donohue & Battle of Argonne
-Influenza pandemic, (Flu Epidemic of 1918)
-Additional strikes,
-Great Depression.
-Rate of immigration slows.
-1918 - Leonard Bernstein born in Lawrence

1920: Population 94, 270. Foreign Born 42%
Panorama Images of Lawrence

1940s-50s: Majority of mills leave the city.
Greater numbers of Lawrence natives leave.
- World War IIWorld War II Exhibit

1950:Population 80,536

1950s: Latino Immigration begins.
After several decades of slower immigration, a new ethnic group (Latinos) began to arrive.
Puerto Ricans first migrated to Lawrence, some to work in the farms and orchards in the region.

1960:Population 71,865

1960s: Cuban refugees come and Dominican immigrants begin to arrive.

1950's - 1970's: Urban Renewal
Urban Renewal of this period results in demolition of whole neighborhoods. Results in more native families leaving.
Urban Renewal articles
Interstate 495 and the Orange Trees

1970:Population 66,216

1970s:Refugees from Southeast Asia and immigrants from Central America arrive

1978: Immigrant City Archives is established under the leadership of German immigrant, Eartha Dengler.
The Archives later changes the name to Lawrence History Center~Immigrant City Archives.
Eartha Dengler

1980:Population 63,175,
Lowest population since 1890s.
Reflects large number of earlier Lawrence families who leave.
Lawrence Heritage State Park opens

Photo by Jim Beauchesne, 2010.

1990:Population 70,207. Minority 41%.
Substantial population increase reflects high immigration rate

1990s: Neighborhood Associations increase and become more active, cleaning public areas, making efforts to beautify neighborhoods and setting up neighborhood watches to combat crime.
Community development partnerships bring together residents of diverse backgrounds to undertake common projects.

2000:Population 72,043. Minority 61%.

2000s:Recent newcomer families increasingly buy Lawrence property and rehabilitate it for businesses and homes.
Expanded State Park area revitalizes Riverfront
Housing Styles in Lawrence
A zoning overlay permits multiple uses of mills to accommodate retail, artist studios, residences.
Increasingly, entrepreneurs buy and invest in mills in a variety of creative ways.
Enel North America works on replacing the flash boards on top of Great Stone Dam.

Crestgates replace the wooden flashboards

Enel NA

2008: The Lawrence History Center ~Immigrant City Archives celebrates its 30th Anniversary.
Transforming Leadership Honorees
30th Anniversary Event
Getting Ready for 30th Anniversary
Change in Leadership at LHC

2009: Lawrence elects State Representative, William "Willy" Lantigua First Hispanic Mayor in City and in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

2010:
Enel North America completes new crest gate project on Great Stone Dam.

Dengler Award 2010: Lawrence History Center honors Kay Frishman of Family Service, Inc.

Background and Early Development

Lawrence, incorporated in 1847, was the final and most ambitious of the New England planned textile-manufacturing cities developed by the Boston entrepreneurs who launched the American Industrial Revolution.

The Essex Company was chartered in 1845 explicitly to build a dam and canals on the Merrimack River for the purpose of providing waterpower for textile mills. Implicitly, the directors planned to sell land on either side of the river for mills, homes for workers and managers, stores, churches, schools and local government. It was also created to build mills and machinery on contract.

The directors of the Essex Company included the interlocked families (Lawrences, Lowells, Appletons, Jacksons and many others) who controlled most of the New England textile industry, who were influential in the early development of the railroad in New England, and who were largely responsible for the growth of the major institutions and cityscape of Boston at a time when it competed for national pre-eminence with New York.

The dam over the Merrimack River, at the time it was completed in 1848, was the largest in the world and remains in excellent condition today because of the innovative engineering and the earliest use, for projects like this, of hydraulic cement injected in the spaces made by the granite rubble that forms the foundation of the dam.

It would be impossible to fully understand the civic and social history of this significant Industrial Revolution community, and indeed the complexity of attitudes and assumptions of the creators of the American Industrial Revolution, without Essex Company records.

The Essex Company built the industrial infrastructure and laid out streets, blocks of house lots and parks. It imposed restricted use deeds – many still in force today - when selling lots or donating land to the new town. Restrictions included number, use and location of structures on lots, height, and building materials.

On lots surrounding the Common donated by the Essex Company, stately homes, the City Hall and Protestant churches were to be built, Catholic churches banished to outside the heart of the City. Irish laborers, needed for building the dam and canal, were accommodated in crowded shanties on land rented from the Essex Company on the other side of the river from the central town.

The Essex Company, though its directors consisted of the interlocking Boston families that launched industrialization in New England, was led on the ground by Charles Storrow, the agent and chief engineer, as well as the City’s first mayor. The records offer a glimpse of a man with a comprehensive vision and a determination to control its implementation. Storrow established banks, directed the development of the schools, influenced the direction of cultural activities. He dominated the local distribution of relief funds, whether for the Irish famine, the Free Kansas movement, or the Pemberton Mill disaster.

None of the other mill towns on the Merrimack, Connecticut, Nashua or Saco Riversthat were part of the later named Boston Associates’ New England holdings were planned with nearly the level of detail of Lawrence. It illustrates the close connection that the American Industrial Revolution had with the culture of control that emerged as these former merchants sought to minimize the vicissitudes of chance experienced in the clipper ship trade with Europe.

This concern is seen in the creation or expansion of institutions such as : *Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital, the Boston Athenaeum;
*The care to do business primarily with relatives and friends who often were or became relatives;
*The development of mechanisms such as trusts to protect estates;
and even the pragmatic and aesthetic preference for controlling natural surroundings.

Control in the creation of Lawrence meant not only state of the art mills, but also corporation boarding houses on a scale large enough to enable mill owners to have sufficient sway over the behavior of their workers and, candidly, to demonstrate to the world that workers could be accommodated in good quality housing.

It meant restricted deeds on lots to ensure that buildings were of sufficient quality. It meant micro managing the development of churches, schools and the local government.

Perhaps most significantly, the Boston Associates, with the creation of Lawrence, felt that they could not take a chance with the supply of water, and therefore created a company jointly owned by the Essex Company and Lowell’s Proprietors of Locks and Canals to purchase all necessary land and water rights for the Merrimack up to and including Lake Winnipesaukee and the other large lakes of New Hampshire.

The Map of Lawrence - Through the Years

This series of maps of Lawrence begins with the farmland of 1844 that was to become Lawrence, and proceeds through a current Google satellite view. The maps have been scaled and oriented so that they overlay one-another to help you see the evolution of the streets of Lawrence.

The incredible transformation Lawrence as depicted in this mapping project, was produced by home-schooler, Dave Russell. The maps were not identical in size or orientation, so each document was correctly sized and positioned so the transformation is clearly visible to the viewer. Although the end result may look simple to us, the viewers, it is the the technology and science that went into the project that allows it to appear that way. With many thanks to Dave for bringing us this visual "Transformation of Lawrence."

For our 30th Anniversary year, the LHC has highlighted "Transformation" as the defining theme. As we study the history of this ever-transforming City, it is as fascinating to look at the surface transformation as well ~ as reflected in the following maps. The City that was originally developed due to its proximity to three rivers: Spicket, Shawsheen and Merrimack. Click here to view the transformation through the years: Click here to view the transformation through the years.

A note: what significant difference do you see in the Spicket in the late 19th century? Hint