Before the automobile age, when Americans lived close to their families and walked to work, the communities that eventually became metropolitan Boston were busy forging the nation’s industrial future in…

After the Revolutionary War, despite political independence, the United States still relied on other countries for manufactured goods. Francis Cabot Lowell, born in Massachusetts in 1775, was one of the…

When Nathan Appleton and his colleagues built their first textile mill on the banks of the Merrimack River in 1822, they were pursuing the vision of their departed mentor, Francis…