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Essex Company Photographs

 Collection
Identifier: 6633 P

Scope and Contents

Photographs of water turbines, canal construction and repair, flooding from spring runoff (freshets), ice dams, various buildings in the Lawrence, Massachusetts, area. Also included are photographs of scenery, family groups, houses, and othe buildings. Hurricane and tornado damage are also pictured.

Boxes 1 through 10 of this collection are prints made from the glass plate negatives in Collection 6633 GPN.

Dates

  • 1872-1967

Language of Materials

Collection material in English

Conditions Governing Access

Access to the collections in the Kheel Center is restricted. Please contact a reference archivist for access to these materials.

Conditions Governing Use

This collection must be used in keeping with the Kheel Center Information Sheet and Procedures for Document Use.

Biographical / Historical

The Essex Company was charted in 1845 to build a dam and canals on the Merrimack River to provide power for textile mills, with the intent to build a planned city, Lawrence, Massachusetts. The company also built several mills and mill machinery.

In the 1830s Daniel Saunders began buying land on either side of the Merrimack River between Lowell and Andover, in order control the water power rights. With his son, Daniel Saunders, Jr., his uncle, J. Abbot Gardiner, and John Nesmith, he established the Merrimack River Power Association. Saunders then approached the Lawrence brothers (Samuel, Amos, and Abbott) and the Boston Associates. The Boston Associates bought the Merrimack Water Power Association and renamed it the Essex Company.

When Lawrence was incorporated as a town in 1847 and a city in 1853, the Essex Company laid out the streets and built much of the infrastructure. The City Hall and churches were built on land donated by the Essex Company.

Unique among the mill towns in New England, Lawrence, Massachusetts, was planned and development controlled due to the fact that the Essex Company owned most of the land along both sides of the river. The company further controlled development by buying, jointly with Lowell's Proprietors of Locks and Canals, land and water rights along the Merrimack River up to Lake Winnipesaukee, in New Hampshire. This led to the Essex Company becoming a pioneer in water and sewage treatment, developing the United States' first slow sand filter for drinking water.

In 1979 a hydroelectric company acquired the Essex Company in order to make use of the dam.

The above organizational history was condensed from The Lawrence History Center's Administrative History for their Records of the Essex Company of Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1845-1987.

Extent

8.78 cubic feet

Abstract

Photographs of water turbines, canal construction and repair, storm damage, as well as other subjects. Most of the photographs were taken in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Related Materials

Related Collections: 6633 G: Essex Company Graphics 6633 GPN: Essex Company Glass Plate Negatives 6633: Essex Company Records 6633 PUBS: Essex Company Publications Records of the Essex Company of Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1845-1987, Lawrence History Center Immigrant City Archives an Museum, Lawrence, Massachusetts

Quantity:

8.3 linear ft.

Forms of Material:

Albumen print, cartes-de-visite (card photographs), gelatin silver print, lithographs, photographs, photomechanical processes, photomechanical prints.

General

Contact Information:
Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives Martin P. Catherwood Library 227 Ives Hall Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 (607) 255-3183 kheel_center@cornell.edu http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/library/kheel-center
Compiled by:
R. Miles, November 10, 2017
EAD encoding:
Randall Miles, January 04, 2018

Processing Information

Not all photographs in this collection are described. Only those that had descriptions from the American Textile History Museum have been described. The prints in boxes 1 through 10, which are from the glass plate negatives in collection 6633 GPN: Essex Company Glass Plate Negatives, have not been described. The described photographs may include some that were printed from negatives in 6633 GPN.

Title
Essex Company Photographs
Status
Completed
Author
Compiled by R. Miles
Date
January 04, 2018
Language of description
Undetermined
Script of description
Code for undetermined script

Revision Statements

  • 02/23/2024: This resource was modified by the ArchivesSpace Preprocessor developed by the Harvard Library (https://github.com/harvard-library/archivesspace-preprocessor)

Repository Details

Part of the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives Repository

Contact:
227 Ives Hall
Ithaca NY 14853