The New International Encyclopædia/Lowell, Francis Cabot

LOWELL, Francis Cabot (1775-1817). An American merchant and manufacturer, the founder of the cotton-manufacturing industry in America. He was born in Boston, the son of Judge John Lowell (q.v.), graduated at Harvard in 1793, and entered upon a mercantile career in Boston. While traveling in England he became convinced that cotton manufacture could be profitably carried on in America, and during the War of 1812, when the necessity for cotton cloth became pressing, he had cotton-looms constructed from his own models and started some cotton-mills, first at Waltham and later on the Merrimac River at a place since named Lowell in his honor.