Francis Cabot Lowell

Francis Cabot Lowell 1775-1817, pioneer American cotton manufacturer, b. Newburyport, Mass.; son of John Lowell (1743-1802). A merchant in Boston, he traveled (1810) to England, where he studied closely the new machinery used in the textile industry of Lancashire. Upon his return, with the aid of Paul Moody, he designed and constructed the first power loom in America, which had important improvements over its English prototypes. With Patrick T. Jackson (his brother-in-law), Nathan Appleton, and others, he formed the Boston Manufacturing Company and at Waltham, Mass., built the first factory in America to perform all the operations involved in converting raw cotton into cloth. He succeeded in having a duty on cotton incorporated into the tariff law of 1816. Lowell, Mass., founded after his death, was named for him.

Bibliography: See C. F. Ware, The Early New England Cotton Manufacture (1931, repr. 1966).

Lowell, Francis Cabot (1775–1817) Founder of the US cotton industry. A Boston merchant, in 1814 he established the first US factory to use both spinning and weaving machinery (and the first in the world to manufacture cotton cloth using power machinery enclosed in a single building) at Waltham, Massachusetts. Lowell was singular among early US industrialists for the paternalistic concern he demonstrated for his workforce and for their living and working conditions.