LAWRENCE

In 1845, a group of Boston entrepreneurs led by Abbott Lawrence formed the Essex Company to harness the power of Bodwell's Falls in the Merrimack River in order to run their commercial concerns. The pace of development rapidly transformed Lawrence from a rural farming community into a major industrial center. Within three years, the Essex Company completed a dam, constructed two canals and a reservoir, organized gas works, and erected fifty brick buildings, a boarding house, a machine shop for building locomotives, and plants which housed the Atlantic Cotton, Pemberton, Upper Pacific and Duck Mills. In 1847, the Boston and Maine Railroad introduced passenger train service and in 1853, Lawrence was incorporated as a city. Lawrence quickly achieved prominence as one of the major centers of woolen textile development in the United States and some of the original mills remain, underscoring the City's continued importance as a textile manufacturing center... Lawrence also has a 500-acre..

Primary location: Lawrence United States