The aim of this volume is to present to the reader facts and incidents in the history of Lawrence. Although much of this history is well known, "some portions - have never before been published. These have been collated to rescue them from oblivion." "In the statistical portion of the work, Ballardvale, Andover, North Andover and Methuen are included, for the reason that the interests of these places have become, in a great measure, identical with those of Lawrence." North Andover and Methuen were especially close to Lawrence due to their connection by a "horse-railway" and the likelihood that they would come under the municipality of Lawrence over time. "In all that has been embodied in these pages, the aim of the author has been to obtain facts in the order of their coming, and to present them, without imbellishment or coloring, for the use of those who may, in coming years, see fit to enlarge upon the themes which he (the author) has only touched." A new everyname index and an index of advertisers provide easy access to information.

The violence and radicalism connected with the Industrial Workers of the World textile strike of 1912 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, left the popular impression that Lawrence was a slum-ridden city inhabited by un-American revolutionaries. Immigrant City is a study of Lawrence which reveals that the city was far different. The book opens with an account of the strike of 1912. It then traces the development of Lawrence from the founding of the city in 1845, when its builders hoped to establish a model mill town, through its years of immigration and growth of 1912. Donald Cole puts the strike in its proper perspective by examining the history of the city, and he emphasizes the immigrant's constant search for security and explores the very important question of whether the immigrant, from his own point of view, found security. The population of Lawrence was almost completely immigrant in nature; in 1910, 90 per cent of its people were either first or second generation Americans, and they represented nearly every nation in the world. The period covered by the book--1845 through 1921--is the great middle period of American immigration, which began with the Irish Famine and ended with the Quota Law of 1921. While Immigrant City concentrates on one American city, it reveals much about American immigration in general and demonstrates clearly that, in spite of the poverty that most immigrants fought, life for the foreign-born in America was not as grim as some writers have suggested.

Latino City explores the transformation of Lawrence, Massachusetts, into New England's first Latino-majority city. Like many industrial cities, Lawrence entered a downward economic spiral in the decades after World War II due to deindustrialization and suburbanization. The arrival of tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in the late twentieth century brought new life to the struggling city, but settling in Lawrence was fraught with challenges. Facing hostility from their neighbors, exclusion from local governance, inadequate city services, and limited job prospects, Latinos fought and organized for the right to make a home in the city. In this book, Llana Barber interweaves the histories of urban crisis in U.S. cities and imperial migration from Latin America. Pushed to migrate by political and economic circumstances shaped by the long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America, poor and working-class Latinos then had to reckon with the segregation, joblessness, disinvestment, and profound stigma that plagued U.S. cities during the crisis era, particularly in the Rust Belt. For many Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, there was no "American Dream" awaiting them in Lawrence; instead, Latinos struggled to build lives for themselves in the ruins of industrial America.

First published in 1868, it was the first history of the City of Lawrence to be published. This book is a clean sharp, newly created reprint of the original volume and it includes over 150 pages of vintage illustrated local advertisements.

Lawrence, Massachusetts is the first extensive photographic history of the city in over seventy-five years, and it offers more than two hundred fascinating images from the renowned Immigrant City Archives--many of them rare and previously unpublished. This fascinating visual history chronicles the growth of a city that began to rise from the plains of the Merrimack River in 1845. Conceived, financed, and managed by Yankee capitalists and designed to be a model town, Lawrence was among the earliest planned manufacturing communities in the country and it quickly became the largest woolen and worsted manufacturing center in the world. From the outset, Lawrence was the gateway to America for thousands of immigrants. Here, they found work, acquired skills, learned English, educated their young people, and eventually became citizens. By 1910, almost 90,000 people--representing 25 nationalities and speaking 40 languages--had made their home within the seven square miles that constitute Lawrence. Their unique story is told through images lovingly cherished in velvet photograph albums and old cardboard boxes, and gathered over the decades from the tenement attics and basements of those who actually lived the lives shown in these photographs. The images vividly portray America's industrial and immigrant past, and show the lives, work, aspirations, pleasures, and sometimes the suffering, of the people who created the city of Lawrence.