The Proprietors of Locks and Canals on Merrimack River is alimited liability corporation founded on June 27, 1792,[1] making it one of the oldest corporations in theUnited States. Its named incorporators were Dudley Atkins Tyng, William Coombs, Joseph Tyler, Nicholas Johnson, and Joshua Carter.[2]
The company was founded to construct thePawtucket Canal around thePawtucket Falls on theMerrimack River, in EastChelmsford, Massachusetts. Over a mile long with four lock chambers, the Pawtucket Canal was finished in 1796. Although the canal allowed for lumber and other goods to be transmitted fromNew Hampshire to the shipyards ofNewburyport, the competingMiddlesex Canal, a direct route toBoston, opened just ten years later, ruining the Pawtucket's business.
In 1821, TheBoston Manufacturing Company ofWaltham, Massachusetts, purchased the charter of the Proprietors of Locks and Canals, incorporating it into the newMerrimack Manufacturing Company. In the early 1820s, the Pawtucket Canal became a major component of theLowell power canal system with the founding of the textile industry at what becameLowell.[3] In 1822Patrick Tracy Jackson appointed himself as agent of Proprietors of Locks and Canals, gaining the ability to determine "who could start what mill and where in Lowell, and for how much".[4]
In 1825, the corporation was reorganized again and separated from the Merrimack Manufacturing Company under the leadership ofKirk Boott. This allowed the city ofLowell to grow quickly, as many other manufacturing corporations were founded in Lowell to take advantage of the waterpower sold by the Proprietors of Locks and Canals.Paul Moody was one of their first chief engineers. In the mid-19th century, the company was under the leadership ofJames B. Francis, inventor of theFrancis Turbine, who took over whenGeorge Washington Whistler left to work on Russia's railway system.[5]
Noah R. Harlow served as chief engineer and paymaster from 1856 until his death in 1892.[6]
In 1857, the Middlesex Mechanic Association recognized the work done by the Proprietors of Locks and Canals to explore the effects ofburnettizing on preventing rapid decay of timbers, an effort essential for long-lasting waterway structures.[7] The corporation still exists today, housed in the same building as Boott Hydropower, LLC, which has a smallpower plant on the Northern Canal in Lowell.