Dracut, a typical New England town with a brilliant but almost forgotten past, was founded in 1701, or 1702 according to the modern Gregorian calendar. A Yankee tradition grew up there side by side with the cultural heritage of many immigrant groups, and this early diversity distinguished the community from some of its neighbors. Dracut's first landowner was John Webb, whose property was sold in the seventeenth century to the town's first resident, Edward Coburn. Dracut men served valiantly in the
Revolutionary War, and many residents figured prominently in the fields of politics and...

In 1604, Sieur De Monts wrote, "The Indians speak of a beautiful river far to the South, which they call Merrimac." The common thread that runs through the history of Lowell is the Merrimac River. The river attracted European explorers and colonists in the seventeenth century, as it had attracted various Native American tribes before them. The fertile land around the river made agriculture profitable for many years, but it was the Merrimac's potential for water power and transportation that opened the area up to industry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Reminders of the Industrial...