Ryan W. Owen, Writer and Photographer
In the 80 years leading up to 1904, Lowell, Massachusetts had grown from a sparsely populated corner of East Chelmsford into a bustling manufacturing city of 95,000 residents. Like any Edwardian-era city, Lowell faced its share of fire risks, especially in its downtown area. Before January was even half over in 1904, Lowell had suffered […]
Read MoreIf you were to visit Lowell, Massachusetts before . . . say, 1890, you would not have met many men walking about the city named João or Manuel. The Portuguese began arriving en masse in New England in the late 19th century and had established, by the first decades of the 20th century, sizable communities in […]
Read MoreFire was a danger never far from the minds of our ancestors at the turn of the last century. In 1904, Lowell, Massachusetts, then a manufacturing city of 95,000 residents and the 39th largest city in the United States¹, suffered a record-setting year in terms of fires, alarms, and losses suffered. Before the year would […]
Read MoreIt turns out that wild turkeys are incredibly difficult to move across long distances. In the days before refrigerated travel, a national roadway system, and even railroads, driving turkeys across long stretches of land was the province of men called turkey drovers. From 1790 to about 1830, turkey drovers walked turkeys to market, literally, at a […]
Read MoreIf you were to walk . . . through Boston’s Scollay Square and down Tremont Street, into what those alive in 1895 called “the congested district”, you would feel the crush of people and electric car traffic on what, even then, was considered a narrow road. On this midsummer workday, as you walk southwest through the […]
Read MoreQuestion: What was the price of a cup of chicken soup in 1915? Answer: Ten cents a cup. Add some ham and eggs to that, and you should be prepared to part with the Barber quarter and Buffalo nickel burning a hole in your pocket. If you’re feeling a little more adventurous or extravagant, you […]
Read MoreWhen I started researching my family tree in 1988, the hobby was quite solitary. I spent hours in the local history room of the Pollard Memorial Library in Lowell, Massachusetts, threading microfilm reels of the local papers through the microfilm readers and leafing through dusty, yellowed City Directories. I remember the excitement of the first time […]
Read MoreFor those of us born into Generation X, the earliest living memory of a family member we’ve likely been exposed to might stretch as far back as Prohibition, or the Great War, or maybe, for the older members of our generation, childhood memories of the Spanish-American War. I write a local history column for the […]
Read MoreTo me, one of the most fascinating concepts to ponder in history is when you can pinpoint a historical event to an exact moment, an exact minute, in time. This gives an event a sense of immediacy – like, if I were there, witnessing the event unfold and looked at my watch, the time would […]
Read More“Let’s have something.” Jake turns back from the bar, and pulls a quart of whisky from his pocket. “$10 . . .” he sighs. “A full Hamilton, this one cost me.” You examine the label in the dim light. It’s not even one of the better brands. The bartender glances at the bottle of whisky, smiles, […]
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Forgotten New England 