During the late restrictions upon commerce and the unhappy war with Great Britain, the at1813 tention of monied men was considerably directed to domestic manufactures. There being a very commodious seat for a manufactory on Concord river, about three hundred rods from its entrance into Merrimack river, Capt. Phineas Whiting and Col. Josiah Fletcher, erected in 1813, a large building of 60 feet long, 50 feet wide and 40 feet high, for a cotton manufactory. It cost about twenty five hundred dollars.

In 1818, they sold the building to Mr. Thomas Hurd, an enterprising gentleman from Charlestown, who repaired and fitted it for a woolen manufactory. Sixteen looms, worked by water, are employed in making satinet; of which about 120 yards per day are manufactured. This estimate includes the colouring, carding and spinning of the wool, weaving and dressing the cloth. It employs of both sexes, about twenty persons.

Machinery-16 Looms, worked by water-1 Winder of 50 bobbins-1 do. for warping 8 spindles -Warping apparatus-1 Columbian spinner of two hundred spindles-3 large coppers for dying-one for blue, of 400 gallons-two smaller for other colours 3 double carding machines, &c. &c.

In 1814, a plan was devised and adopted by the

town, for building a number of tombs, on the 1814 south west side of the old burying ground.Several of which were built in 1814, others in 1815 and 1816. They were constructed of split stones of the poorest sort of granite except the head, or tomb-stone, which is of Chelmsford best granite.-The expense of them was from sixty to a hundred dollars a piece, according to the care and labor bestowed in the workmanship. This range of tombs, is a great ornament to the place and a convenience to the possessors.

The same year, a new burying ground was purchased by the town. It is located in the north east part of the town near Pawtuckett falls.

The remarkable and destructive gale, experienc

『,

ed through New-England, Sept. 18, upset 1815 and moved out of their place most of the small buildings, and several barns in this town.* Col. Joseph Bowers, his nephew of 16 and son of 8 years old, were wonderfully preserved. They were at work in the barn, and happened to be in the linter at the moment when it fell. They were buried under its ruins. Col. Bowers and his son were uninjured. His nephew Milo F. Byam had his head so hardly pressed between two timbers as to start his eye-balls from their sockets; he was timely relieved, and in a few weeks recovered his health.

A considerable proportion of the fruit and forest trees was broken down, eradicated, or prostrated to the ground.

The wood blown down and destroyed in Chelmsford, is estimated at 50,000 cords.

A very large elm of 60 years growth, before the house of Maj. Nathl. Howard, was blown down, which contained on measurement 8 1-2 cords of wood. It was 4 1-2 feet diameter at the ground and 14 feet in circumference.

66

A storm similar to that in 1815, was experienced in New-England, Aug. 15, 1635, Many houses were blown down,many more uncovered. The Indian corn was beat down to the ground so as not to rise again. The tide a Narraganset rose 20 feet perpendicularly. The Indians were obliged to betake themselves to the trees, and yet many of them were drowned by the return of the tide before the usual

*The barns of Mr. Samuel Marshall, sen. Col. Bowers and Mrs. Haywood, together with a barn of Mr. Joei Mansfield, were blown down.

hour."* "Immense numbers of the forest trees were destroyed." None now living in these parts, neither English nor Indian, had seen the like. The extremity of it continued five or six hours.‡

Several new mills were built, a saw-mill on deep

brook, by Messrs. Chamberlains. A saw 1816 and grist mill, at Pawtuckett falls, by Mr. Luke Bowers and sons; a grist mill on the Locks and canals on Merrimack river, by Mr. N. Tyler; and a saw mill on Beaver Brook, by Mr. Moses Hale.

* Hubbard

+ Hutchin's

+ Morton

1817.

This year the following memorial was presented to the town which as it contains a detail of its transactions, relative to the support of the gospel from its first settlement to the present time, is deemed worthy of being transmitted to posterity.

A MEMORIAL,

Addressed to the Inhabitants of the town of Chelmsford. WHEN I accepted your invitation to settle in the gospel ministry among you, I considered the terms which you proposed liberal, and adequate to a comfortable support. Having had no experience of the expence of maintaining a family, and totally unacquainted with the peculiar circumstances of the town, that have raised the price of real estate and of sundry articles of living to a height before unknown, I had great confidence that should my stipulated support prove on trial insufficient for the demands of the station I was to fill, I should find a ready resource in that justice and kindness, which for almost a century and a half after the first settlement of the town distinguished its inhabitants in relation to their minis

ters.

Relying on your christian feelings and principles together with the example of your ancestors in their conduct towards those, who ministered unto them in holy things, that my usefulness would not be impressed by pecuniary want, or my ministry brought to an untimely end by those disheartening circumstances, which it is always in the power of Christian communities to prevent or remedy, I felt willing to make every possible sacrifice of a personal nature to promote your temporal and spiritual interests, and secure at length a peaceful assylum for my bones by

the side of the mortal remains of those who had gone before, in the christian ministry in this place.

Entering into your service with these hopes, and destitute of that experience, which is the best guide to a just estimate of the necessary expenditures of maintaining a public station, which has numerous and constant demands on the pecuniary resources of those who exercise the gospel ministry; I soon found an insurmountable obstacle to my usefulness and comfort, and an impenetrable cloud spread over my future prospect by the utter want of competent means either to purchase, or build a house. Confident that you would see the difficulty of my obtaining one, and the reasonableness of affording some aid either by building on the ministerial land or in some other way, which your wisdom might suggest, I made application in 1804 for some assistance in building or purchasing a house. But the article, when it came before the town, was dismissed without discussion or commitment.

Thus disappointed in my most sanguine expectation of a favorable hearing from the town, I had no other alternative but to take a dismission within a few months after I was ordained, or make great efforts and sacrifices without much hope of success in attempting to procure a shelter from the storm, and à hiding place from the tempest. As a request for a dismission, would wear the appearance of trifling with a most solemn engagement, I telt it my duty to make trial of all the means in my power to obtain a permanent habitation. For many years I have endured great hardships, suffering and fatigue by laboring in the field and instructing youth in addition to the preparatory labors of the pulpit and the numerous calls of parochial duty. By these laborious employments and unwearied exertions of body and mind, I had hoped to extricate myself from embarrasment and debt, so as to pass the evening of my days in greater devotedness to the great objects of the gospel ministry; when unexpectd