Lowell, Francis Cabot (1775–1817)

US industrialist who imported the new technology of English textile mills to America. With the cutoff of international trade during the Anglo-American War of 1812, Lowell established the Boston Manufacturing Company, a mechanized textile mill at Waltham, Massachusetts.

Lowell was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard. He became a successful merchant. On a trip to England 1810–12 he was impressed by the country's mechanized mills and returned to the USA to build his own, similar mills. After the war he campaigned for tariff protection for the US textile industry. In 1822 the mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts, was established and named after him.