Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / The Boston Manufacturing Company was established on the Charles River in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1813. It was America's first modern factory not because it first put the processes of carding, spinning and weaving under one roof, as has often been stated, but because it first put all these processes to work by power. The company had t1velve original proprietors; the three most important were Francis Cabot Lowell, Nathan Appleton, and Patrick Tracy Jackson, all Boston merchants who had made fortunes in commerce and who sought new fields for investment when the War of 1812 made shipping unprofitable. Lowell was especially influential, for in 1811 he visited English factories and memorized plans for a power loom--export of textile machinery and emigration of mechanics was strictly prohibited by British law. To superintend its machine shop, the new company fortunately found Paul Moody. His mechanical genius gave the industry many improvements and several inventions. His shop became a "school for mechanics" and, although the company tried to prevent it, many of the workers stayed only long enough to learn, before answering the huge demand for Waltham-trained men in other factories. [TRUNCATED]

Thesis advisor: Dennis Shirley / In 1814, a group of wealthy Boston merchants led by Francis Cabot Lowell established the Boston Manufacturing Company in Waltham, Massachusetts. In the decades before the Civil War, Lowell and his partners constructed public schools for Waltham children living in the vicinity of the mills and paid many of the schools' educational expenses, including teachers' salaries. The company also promoted adult education through its establishment of the Manufacturers' Library and its support of the Rumford Institute for Mutual Instruction, one of the first lyceums in the United States. Previous research on the Boston Manufacturing Company has primarily focused on its unique labor force ("mill girls") and its role as America's first modern industrial corporation, while the story of the company's involvement in education has been neglected. Based on company records, school committee reports, newspaper accounts, Francis Lowell's personal correspondence, and other archival sources, this study highlights the forgotten history of corporate support for education in antebellum Waltham. The findings indicate that the support given to Waltham educational institutions by Francis Lowell and his business partners can be attributed to their patriotism, generosity, and belief in civic virtue. Implications for the history of American education, the Industrial Revolution, and twenty-first century public/private sector educational partnerships are addressed. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Between 1813 and 1825 the Boston Manufacturing Company built a textile factory in Waltham, Massachusetts. Their factory is known for many important firsts in American industry, including the first commercially viable power loom, one of the first vertically integrated factories, and one of the first join stock financed manufacturing concerns. This successful factory became the direct model for the large textile mills built along the Merrimack River and elsewhere, iconic locations of American post-colonial industrialization. This dissertation looks at the early development and success of the Boston Manufacturing Company from a geographical perspective. It argues that in order build a successful factory, the company, its managers, and its workers, had to transform their "place": a notion that I investigate from an economic-geographical and anthropological point of view, moving from site, to landscape, to geographic networks. On these grounds, I show how the logic of the factory's development was both embedded in and shaping the emerging structures surrounding it, and how, in turn, the company’s later move to Lowell as one of the iconic industrial sites depended on its having successfully learned the business of "place-making" in its foundational Waltham decade. / History of Science