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306 1813, Captain Phineas Whiting and Major Josiah Fletcher erected a wooden cotton-mill on the site of the Middlesex

Company's mills, and were successful in their enterprise. John Golding, in the same neighborhood, was not so fortunate.

The year 1815 is memorable for the most disastrous gale that has devastated New England during two centuries; it was very severe in Chelmsford.

The sawmill and gristmill of the Messrs. Bowers, at Pawtucket Falls, was started in 1816. The same year Nathan Tyler started a gristmill where the Middlesex Company's mill No. 3 now stands. Captain John Ford's sawmill stood near the junction of the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.

In 1818, Moses Hale started the powder-mills on Concord River. The following year Oliver M. Whipple and William Tileston were associated with him in business. In 1821, the firm opened Whipple's Canal. The business was enlarged from time to time and was at its zenith during the Mexican War, when, in one year, nearly five hundred tons of powder were made. The manufacture of powder in Lowell ceased in 1855. In 1818, also, came Thomas Hurd, who purchased the cotton-mill started by Whiting and Fletcher and converted it into a woolen-mill. He soon enlarged his operations, building a large brick mill near the other. He was the pioneer manufacturer of satinets in this country. His mill was destroyed by fire and rebuilt in 1826. About this time he built the Middlesex (Mills) Canal, which conveyed water from the Pawtucket Canal to his satinet-mills, thus affording additional

power. His business was ruined in 1828 by the reaction in trade; and two years later the property passed into the hands of the Middlesex Company.