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16-751: Benjamin Butler, a lawyer who grew up on Lowell, became a major shareholder of Middlesex Mills in the 1850s; because of his successful law practice he was one of Lowell's wealthiest residents at the end of the Civil War. With other local capitalists, he formed the Wamesit Power Company , the United States Bunting Company, and the United States Cartridge Company. Patent attorney Joe V. Meigs invented an improved metallic cartridge for

32-782: A National Register of Historic Places property in Lowell , Massachusetts is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Loammi Baldwin Jr. Loammi Baldwin Jr. (May 16, 1780 – June 30, 1838) was an American civil engineer. His father was Col. Loammi Baldwin , a prominent civil engineer. Baldwin was born at North Woburn, Massachusetts living at Baldwin House aka "The Baldwin Mansion", educated at Westford Academy , and graduated from Harvard College in 1800. His early inclinations were towards mechanical subjects, and during his college life he made

48-613: A clock which kept good time. In 1794 at age 14 he accompanied his father and two brothers ( Cyrus , 22, and Benjamin , 17) on a nine-day consulting inspection visit from the famous canal engineer William Weston of the route of the Middlesex Canal . Later all five of Loammi Baldwin Senior's sons (Loammi Baldwin Jr., Benjamin Franklin Baldwin , Cyrus Baldwin, James Fowle Baldwin and George Rumford Baldwin ) worked with their father on

64-895: A marine railway at Pensacola ; construction of buildings at Harvard College ; a canal around the Ohio River falls; a stone bridge called the Warren Bridge at Charlestown; and the Union Canal in Pennsylvania. Baldwin was twice married; first to Ann, daughter of George Williams, of Salem. She was sister of Samuel Williams, an eminent American banker in London; second on June 22, 1828, to Catherine, widow of Captain Thomas Beckford, of Charlestown. She died May 3, 1864. Child by first marriage: Samuel Williams Baldwin, born 1817, died December 28, 1822. About

80-606: A merger and was moving its production to Connecticut (the process finished in 1916) was happy to lease space in a carpet factory in Lowell, built by the Lowell Manufacturing Co., and a new ammunition factory was built in South Lowell. As employment swelled to 15,000, a labor strike in the autumn of 1915 was resolved within a month to sustain ammunition production. A total of 2,262,671,000 military cartridges were manufactured for

96-847: A year, mostly in France, examining public works. In 1825 he joined a small committee planning the Bunker Hill Monument and recommended the obelisk now seen there. In 1827 he accepted an appointment from the United States government which led to the two great works of his life (1827-1834): the naval dry docks at the Boston Navy Yard in Charlestown and at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth . Baldwin led many other projects such as

112-584: The Concord River , underwent a major expansion from a more modest millworks in the mid-19th century by Oliver Whipple, a manufacturer of gunpowder . Oliver Whipple was a grandson of American Revolutionary War officer James Whipple of Grafton, Massachusetts . Whipple was born in Weathersfield, Vermont , in 1794 and in 1815 he followed the Connecticut River downstream to learn gunpowder manufacturing at

128-697: The Laflin mill in Southwick, Massachusetts . As the Laflin brothers moved their gunpowder manufacturing operations elsewhere, Whipple moved to east in 1818 to manage a gunpowder mill built by Moses Hale on River Meadow Brook in East Chelmsford upstream of its confluence with the Concord River. River Meadow Brook became known as Hale's Brook. Whipple became Hale's partner after marrying Hale's daughter in 1820. Whipple undertook

144-740: The United Kingdom , Russia , the Netherlands , Italy , France , and the United States . National Lead Company purchased a controlling stock interest after Paul Butler died in 1918. Cartridge manufacturing machinery was moved from Lowell to New Haven in 1926 where manufacturing continued under the Winchester name after the Lowell plants closed on 1 January 1927. Winchester was purchased by Olin Corporation on 22 December 1931. Olin used their subsidiary United States Cartridge Company to build and operate

160-736: The British. He served as chief engineer with the rank of Colonel, a title which has sometimes confused him with his father. In 1819 he was asked to complete the construction of the Milldam, now that stretch of Beacon Street beyond the Boston Common . From 1817 to 1820, he worked in Virginia , and in 1821 was made engineer of the Union Canal in Pennsylvania . In 1824 Baldwin returned to Europe and remained there

176-591: The Saint Louis Ordnance Plant manufacturing military small arms ammunition in St. Louis through World War II . 42°37′55.73″N 71°18′7.79″W  /  42.6321472°N 71.3021639°W  / 42.6321472; -71.3021639 Wamesit Canal-Whipple Mill Industrial Complex The Wamesit Canal-Whipple Mill Industrial Complex is a historic mill and canal at 576 Lawrence Street in Lowell, Massachusetts . This industrial area of Lowell, located on

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192-978: The company; and oversaw production beginning in 1869. Meigs was replaced in the mid-1870s by Charles Dimon, who had been an officer under Butler's command during the Civil War. By the early 1880s, the company employed 250 workers producing cartridges, paper-shot-shells, and primers. Paul Butler assumed control of the company when his father died in 1893. Benjamin Butler's grandson, Butler Ames , replaced Charles Dimon in 1902. A 29 July 1903 powder magazine explosion in Tewksbury, Massachusetts destroyed or damaged seventy homes killing 22 employees and residents and injuring 70 more. New brick magazines and factories replaced early wooden structures prior to World War I. The company employed 1,200 when British purchasing agents arrived in September 1914 to request expanded production. Bigelow-Hartford Carpet Company which emerged months earlier from

208-479: The construction of a canal along the Concord River to provide power for a number of mills he erected in the area, consulting with engineer Loammi Baldwin Jr. on the matter. Whipple manufactured Boston Gunpowder at the improved mill until 1855 although he began moving gunpowder manufacturing operations to a more remote location on Maine's Cumberland and Oxford Canal in 1833 to minimize risks of accidental explosions and to be closer to supplies of charcoal. The area

224-675: The same in France , but he was barred by the difficulty in entering the country. Upon his return he began an engineering practice in Charlestown, Massachusetts . He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1810, and a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1814. One of his earliest engineering works was the construction of Fort Strong (1814), a fort in Boston Harbor built for defense against

240-540: The ten-year construction of the Middlesex Canal . After graduation, he entered a law office in Groton, Massachusetts , where he constructed a fire engine called "Torrent", which the town greatly needed. In 1804 he completed his studies at Groton and opened his own law office in Cambridge . In 1807, however, he abandoned his law practice in favor of engineering. He traveled to England to inspect public works and intended to do

256-460: Was further developed in the second half of the 19th century by Benjamin Butler 's Wamesit Power Company, which acquired most of Whipple's properties and water rights. Portions of Whipple's gunpowder mill built in the 1820s are among the oldest surviving industrial structures in the city. The complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. This article about

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