Nathan Appleton's 1858 memoir of the early American cotton industry, printed for the Proprietors of the Locks and Canals on Merrimack River. It opens with a letter from three Lowell company officers requesting his reminiscences and his reply. The first part describes the introduction of the power loom at Waltham in 1814 with Francis C. Lowell, Patrick T. Jackson and Paul Moody, along with changes in dressing, spinning and selling cotton cloth. The second part, "The Origin of Lowell," covers the purchase of the Pawtucket Canal and water power in 1821, the founding of the Merrimack Manufacturing Company, calico printing, labor and housing for mill operatives, the naming of Lowell, and tariff and water-power matters.