History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts - citizen hylbom blog

70 HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
interested. He also visited the jjriiit-works, where
he saw the process of printing calicoes.
Warren Colburn was born in Dedham, March 1,
1793, and was the son of Eichard and Joanna
(Eaton) Colburn. While a teacher he wrote and
published his well-known work on Arithmetic,
called the First Lessons. He finished the Sequel
after he went to Waltham, during his leisure time.
His First Lessons gradually worked its way to
notice and favor, and enjoyed a more enviable suc-
cess than any other school-book ever published
in this country, and its merits were deservedly ac-
knowledged. It has been stated that fifty thousand
copies of Colburn's First Lessons are annually used
in Great Britain. About two millions of copies
had been sold in 1856.
June IS, 1824, the superintendent of the Merrimack
Manufacturing Company, Mr. Ezra Worthen,
died instantly while engaged in his ordinary duties.
Mr. Colburn was appointed his successor.
Mr. Samuel Batclielder says of Colburn : " His
mathematical skill, and his knowledge of the prin-
ciples of mechanics, gave him important advantages
for the situation in which he was placed, and he
was not less successful in his good judgment in the
general management of business." He died Sep-
tember 13, 1833.
October 25, Henry Clay, tiie eminent Kentuckian,
visited Lowell. He visited the schools, and in
the evening of that day held a reception in the old
town-hall.
At the town-meeting, January 18, 1834, a
motion to reconsider the vote of November 25,
1833, on the annexation of Belvidere, was carried
(yeas 724, nays 1), and the representatives were
instructed to oppose the annexation. March 29,
the legislature passed " an Act to set off a part of
the town of Tewksbury and annex the same to the
town of Lowell." This settled a long controversy.
November 10, a committee appointed May 5, 1832,
to consider the matter of a poor-farm, reported in
favor of a house seventy-five feet long, thirty-seven
feet wide, and three stories high in front, to be
built of brick or stone. Estimated cost, (Jf 6,000.
May 7, David Crockett, of Tennessee, visited tiie
town, and was toted, toasted, and ])raised to his
heart's content. He says of this visit : " I wanted
to sec liow it was that these Nortlierners could buy
our cotton and carry it home, manufacture it, bring
it back, and sell it fm- half nothing; and, in the
mean time, be well to live, and Miakc niomy be-
sides. We stuijped at the large stone liousc ut the
head of the falls of the Merrimack River, and having
taken a little refreshment, went down among the
factories. The dinner-bells were ringing and the
folks pouring out of the houses like bees out of a
gum. I looked at them as they passed, all well
dressed, lively, and genteel in their appearance;
indeed, the girls looked as if they were coming
from a quilting frolic."
May 31, 1834, a steamboat was launched above
Pawtucket Falls, to run on the Merrimack River
between Lowell and Nashua. This enterprise
originated with Joel Stone of Lowell and J. P.
Simpson of Boston. The first steamboat on the
Merrimack is said to have come from Boston in
1819, and reached Concord, N. H. Stone and
Simpson's boat, ninety feet long and twenty wide,
was named the Herald. Joel Stone was her first
captain.
Thomas Hopkinson delivered the oration on the
4th of July.
October 4, George Tiiompson, a distinguished
English antislavery orator, spoke in Lowell. Mis-
siles were hurled at the building from behind the
speaker. One of these, a large brickbat, came
through the window with a startling crash, passed
near Mr. Thompson's head, and fell upon the floor.
This was preserved, and exhibited in the rooms of
the New England Antislavery Society, Boston. On
it was this inscription : —
" While G. Tlionipsou, from England, \i'as pleading the
cause of 2,300,000 huuiau and immortal American born
beings, held in brutal, unmitigated, and soul-destroying
bondage, iu this laud of Republicanism and Christianity,
this deadly missile was hurled with tremendous force at his
head by oue of the citizens of Low-hell. In the year of
our Saviour Christ, 1834 ; of American Indepeudence, 5S."
The following placard was found posted up the
next morning —
:
" Citizens of Lowell, arise !
Look well to your interests !
Will you suffer a question to be discussed in Lowell which
will endanger the safety of the Union, — a question which
we have not by our constitution a right to meddle with ?
Fellow-citizens, shall Lowell be tiie first place to suffer an
Eugiishmau to disturl) the peace and harmony of our conntry
? Do you wish instruction from au Englishman ? If you
are free-born sons of America, meet, oue and all, at the
town-hall, this evening, at half-past seven o'clock, and
convince your Southern brethren that we will not interfere
with their rights."
Mr. Thompson that day received an anonymous
letter, a rare specimen of the literature of that day,
telling him that " there is a plot in agitation to
immerse vou iu a vat of indelible ink."