Title
Records of the Essex Company of Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1845-1987
The materials in this collection document the Essex Company's principal activity from1845-1987: to supply and manage the delivery of water power to the major manufacturers along the banks of the canals and rivers in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The collection also includes materials related to the development of the city of Lawrence, as the directors of the Essex Company were responsible for its early planning. The collection contains business, property, and engineering records.
The business records consist of correspondence files of the Cashier and Treasurer, tax records and returns, bookkeeping and payroll records, banking and insurance records, complete sets of annual vouchers, and records indicating transactions of water power used. There are also annual reports to shareholders, and considerable records showing stock ownership and transfers.
The property records document the ownership and transfer of significant amounts of real estate in Lawrence, including the original purchases made by the Essex Company to develop the area. Contained in the collection are records, drawings, deeds (as early as 1724), deed books, and titles to land that the Essex Company bought and sold at various times in its history, including information about mortgages held by the company.
The engineering records consist of the Engineer's diaries and correspondence, drawings and plans of the dam and canals, the Merrimack, Spicket, and Shawsheen rivers, the streets and infrastructure of Lawrence, and some of the mill buildings. Included also are meteorological records from 1880 to 1987, during which time the Essex Company served as a climatological recording station for the federal government. Numerous copies of engineering-related publications authored by Essex Company engineers are also present, as are materials related to contractual hydropower work performed by the engineers in other regional locations.
Other parts of the collection include photographs owned by the Essex Company, maps and atlases (mostly of Lawrence but representing all of New England), engineer's reference materials, artifacts, and information on the 1880 Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Fund (including signed pledges by thousands of mill workers from mills throughout Lawrence), the White Fund, the Lawrence Paper Company, and the Pemberton Development Corporation.
notes: Processing of the Records of the Essex Company was made possible by a 2001 grant from National Endowment for the Humanities and a 2002 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
Records arranged and described by Michael Hearn, September 2002-November 2003. Research and additional descriptive text provided by A. Patricia Jaysane. Finding aid assembled by Catherine Reinhardt.
Fonds and series level descriptions are based on ISAD(G): General International Standards for Archival Description, Second Edition. Ottowa, 2000.
pubnotes: Hay, Duncan Erroll. Building the "New City on the Merrimack": The Essex Company and Its Role in the Creation of Lawrence, Massachusetts. Ph.D. Dissertation,1983.
Ford, Peter. "Father of the Whole Enterprise" Charles S. Storrow and the Making of Lawrence, Massachusetts 1845-1860. 2000.
Poirier, Clarisse. Pemberton Mills 1852-1938: A Case Study of the Industrial and Labor History of Lawrence, Massachusetts. Ph.D. Dissertation, 1979.
admin: The Essex Company was chartered in 1845 explicitly to build a dam and canals on the Merrimack River for the purpose of providing water power for textile mills. Implicitly, the directors planned create a city (Lawrence, Massachusetts) by selling 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.
As early as the mid 1830s, a small manufacturer turned land speculator, Daniel Saunders, began buying thin strips of land on either side of the Merrimack River between Lowell and Andover/Methuen in order to be able to control water power rights. He worked with his son, Daniel Saunders, Jr., his uncle, J. Abbot Gardiner, and John Nesmith. They established the Merrimack Water Power Association and then approached Samuel Lawrence, brother of Amos and Abbott Lawrence, both major manufacturers and part of the later named Boston Associates. Samuel Lawrence reported to his brothers and to other manufacturing leaders, most prominently Nathan Appleton and Patrick Tracy Jackson. A number of the Boston Associates bought out Daniel Saunders and the others and formed the Essex Company. They kept Daniel Saunders on for a period to continue as a land agent.
Lawrence was incorporated as a town in 1847 and as a city in 1853. The Essex Company built the industrial infrastructure and laid out streets, blocks of house lots, and parks. It imposed restricted use deeds - many theoretically 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. 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. He established banks, directed the development of the schools, influenced the direction of cultural activities, and dominated the local distribution of relief funds, whether for the Irish famine, the Free Kansas movement, or the Pemberton Mill disaster.
The activities of the Boston Associates in the manufacturing empire they built were precursors to the better-known "robber barons" who gained prominence in the later 19th century. Members active at the time Lawrence was built included Nathan Appleton, Amos, Abbott, and Samuel Lawrence, Patrick Tracy Jackson, William Sturgis, Ignatius Sargent, and members of the Cabot and Lowell families, among others. The contemporary concern about the environmental impacts of industry can find much in the Essex Company records to trace the sources of today's concerns, including diversion of rivers, Brownfields, and the impact of dams on fish (fishways were required in the initial charter, and the largely unsuccessful efforts, along with records of multiple lawsuits, are documented).
None of the other mill towns on the Merrimack, Connecticut, Nashua or Saco Rivers that were part of the later named Boston Associates' New England holdings were planned with nearly the level of detail of Lawrence. The Essex Company's control in the creation of Lawrence meant not only state-of-the-art mills, but also corporation boarding houses. These were built on a scale large enough to enable mill owners to have sufficient sway over the behavior of their workers and 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 felt that they could not take a chance with the supply of water. Therefore, they 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.
Later, this led to the Essex Company taking the lead in efforts to purify water. Hiram Mills, chief engineer of the Essex Company, became director of the Committee on Water Supplies and Sewerage on the Massachusetts Board of Health, in which capacity he established the Lawrence Experiment Station in an Essex Company facility. The Lawrence Experiment Station conducted the nation's first sustained experiments on water and sewage, leading to international renown. The first major project to come out of this was the development, in Lawrence, of the nation's first slow sand filter to combat Typhoid in drinking water. Until its operations were moved to bigger quarters at another site in the 1950s, the original Lawrence Experiment Station was a magnet for world leaders in sanitary engineering.
Not surprisingly, the Essex Company exercised significant influence over Lawrence for many years. Charles Storrow, Daniel Saunders, Jr., and Robert Tewksbury (long time cashier of the Essex Company) all served as mayors. Charles Storrow also directed the establishment of schools, and Robert Tewksbury served for some years as city treasurer. The latter was known as the city historian and was very active in civic affairs, including heading the committee to design the Soldiers and Sailors Monument and raise funds for it with a pledge drive throughout the mills.
The Essex Company established Lawrence at a critical juncture in American industrial, immigration, and political history. In the late 1840s, water power was gradually being replaced by steam in America, the anticipated workers from New England farms were rapidly replaced by Irish immigrants, and the Whig Party was losing its influence through the dissolution of ties binding the Boston entrepreneurs. The records reveal the give and take and the tensions between the Essex Company and the City into the 1930s. In 1979, a hydroelectric company wishing to make use of the dam absorbed the Essex Company.
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 create a city (Lawrence, Massachusetts) by selling 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.
As early as the mid 1830s, a small manufacturer turned land speculator, Daniel Saunders, began buying thin strips of land on either side of the Merrimack River between Lowell and Andover/Methuen in order to be able to control water power rights. He worked with his son, Daniel Saunders, Jr., his uncle, J. Abbot Gardiner, and John Nesmith. They established the Merrimack Water Power Association and then approached Samuel Lawrence, brother of Amos and Abbott Lawrence, both major manufacturers and part of the later named Boston Associates. Samuel Lawrence reported to his brothers and to other manufacturing leaders, most prominently Nathan Appleton and Patrick Tracy Jackson. A number of the Boston Associates bought out Daniel Saunders and the others and formed the Essex Company. They kept Daniel Saunders on for a period to continue as a land agent.
Lawrence was incorporated as a town in 1847 and as a city in 1853. The Essex Company built the industrial infrastructure and laid out streets, blocks of house lots, and parks. It imposed restricted use deeds - many theoretically 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. 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. He established banks, directed the development of the schools, influenced the direction of cultural activities, and dominated the local distribution of relief funds, whether for the Irish famine, the Free Kansas movement, or the Pemberton Mill disaster.
The activities of the Boston Associates in the manufacturing empire they built were precursors to the better-known "robber barons" who gained prominence in the later 19th century. Members active at the time Lawrence was built included Nathan Appleton, Amos, Abbott, and Samuel Lawrence, Patrick Tracy Jackson, William Sturgis, Ignatius Sargent, and members of the Cabot and Lowell families, among others. The contemporary concern about the environmental impacts of industry can find much in the Essex Company records to trace the sources of today's concerns, including diversion of rivers, Brownfields, and the impact of dams on fish (fishways were required in the initial charter, and the largely unsuccessful efforts, along with records of multiple lawsuits, are documented).
None of the other mill towns on the Merrimack, Connecticut, Nashua or Saco Rivers that were part of the later named Boston Associates' New England holdings were planned with nearly the level of detail of Lawrence. The Essex Company's control in the creation of Lawrence meant not only state-of-the-art mills, but also corporation boarding houses. These were built on a scale large enough to enable mill owners to have sufficient sway over the behavior of their workers and 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 felt that they could not take a chance with the supply of water. Therefore, they 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.
Later, this led to the Essex Company taking the lead in efforts to purify water. Hiram Mills, chief engineer of the Essex Company, became director of the Committee on Water Supplies and Sewerage on the Massachusetts Board of Health, in which capacity he established the Lawrence Experiment Station in an Essex Company facility. The Lawrence Experiment Station conducted the nation's first sustained experiments on water and sewage, leading to international renown. The first major project to come out of this was the development, in Lawrence, of the nation's first slow sand filter to combat Typhoid in drinking water. Until its operations were moved to bigger quarters at another site in the 1950s, the original Lawrence Experiment Station was a magnet for world leaders in sanitary engineering.
Not surprisingly, the Essex Company exercised significant influence over Lawrence for many years. Charles Storrow, Daniel Saunders, Jr., and Robert Tewksbury (long time cashier of the Essex Company) all served as mayors. Charles Storrow also directed the establishment of schools, and Robert Tewksbury served for some years as city treasurer. The latter was known as the city historian and was very active in civic affairs, including heading the committee to design the Soldiers and Sailors Monument and raise funds for it with a pledge drive throughout the mills.
The Essex Company established Lawrence at a critical juncture in American industrial, immigration, and political history. In the late 1840s, water power was gradually being replaced by steam in America, the anticipated workers from New England farms were rapidly replaced by Irish immigrants, and the Whig Party was losing its influence through the dissolution of ties binding the Boston entrepreneurs. The records reveal the give and take and the tensions between the Essex Company and the City into the 1930s. In 1979, a hydroelectric company wishing to make use of the dam absorbed the Essex Company.
Collection
Essex Company Collection
Creator
Essex Company (Lawrence, Mass.)
The bulk of the Essex Company materials were acquired in September 1992 when the Essex Company offices (6 Essex Street, Lawrence, Mass.) and their contents were purchased by the Lawrence History Center (then Immigrant City Archives). The Essex Company also donated materials to Immigrant City Archives in 1989 (Accession Number 1989.008).
The collection includes some fragile and large-formate materials that should be handled only with the assistance of the Lawrence History Center staff.
Rights
Unrestricted access.
Relations
See the Lawrence City Records at the Lawrence History Center and the records of the City of Lawrence Dept. of Public Works.