The wheels of the first mill were started in September, 1823.
Next year the partners petitioned the Legislature to have their
part of the township set off to form a new town. One year later
still they erected three new mills; and in another year (1826)
the town of Lowell was incorporated.
The year 1829 found the Lowell mills in straits for lack of
capital, from which, however, they were promptly relieved by two
great merchants of Boston, Amos and Abbott Lawrence, who now
became partners in the business and who afterwards founded the
city named for them farther down on the Merrimac River.
The story of the Lowell cotton factories, for twenty years, more
or less, until the American girls operating the machines came to
be supplanted by French Canadians and Irish, is appropriately
summed up in the title of a book which describes the factory life
in Lowell during those years. The title of this book is "An Idyl
of Work" and it was written by Lucy Larcom, who was herself one
of the operatives and whose mother kept one of the corporation
boarding-houses. And Lucy Larcom was not the only one of the
Lowell "factory girls" who took to writing and lecturing. There
were many others, notably, Harriet Hanson (later Mrs. W. S.
Robinson), Harriot Curtis ("Mina Myrtle"), and Harriet Farley;
and many of the "factory girls" married men who became prominent
in the world.
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