Jackson

above all kind. He was public spirited, being
one of the prime movers for an improved public
school system in Wisconsin, and he endowed a
professorship of law in the University of Wis-
consin. Though not markedly original, he was
a pleasing public speaker. His health was never
robust.

[The best sketch of Jackson is by Wilshire C. But-
terfield in the Mag. of Western Hist., Jan. 1887. See
also addresses by S. U. Pinney and J. H. Carpenter
on presenting Jackson's portrait to the Wisconsin Su-
preme Court, 80 Wis. Reports, xliii-xlviii; Proc. of the
Thirty-seventh Ann. Meeting of the State Hist. Soc. of
Wis. (1890); Wis. State Jour., Oct. 14, 15, 1889.]

JACKSON, PATRICK TRACY (Aug. 14,
I78o-Sept 12,1847), founder of cotton factories
at Lowell, was born at Newburyport, Mass., the
youngest son of Jonathan and Hannah (Tracy)
Jackson. James, 1777-1867, and Charles Jackson
[qq.v.] were his brothers. His maternal grand-
father, Patrick Tracy, had migrated penniless
from Ireland, but had raised himself to a position
of opulence and public esteem in the city of New-
buryport. His father enjoyed a distinguished
career as a member of the Continental Congress
in 1782, supervisor of internal revenue for the
Boston district, treasurer of Massachusetts, and
treasurer of Harvard College. Educated in the
Newburyport schools and at Dummer Academy,
Jackson was apprenticed at the age of fifteen to
William Bartlett, at that time the richest and
most enterprising merchant of Newburyport
Skill and industry soon won him the confidence
of his master and before he had reached the age
of twenty he was dispatched as supercargo on a
voyage to St. Thomas with authority superior
to the captain. His success in this venture led
his elder brother, Capt Henry Jackson, to offer
him in 1799 the position of captain's clerk on his
ship bound for the Far East, and Bartlett gen-
erously relinquished his claims of apprenticeship
to enable the boy to take advantage of the op-
portunity.

Following this trip Jackson took command of
ship and cargo for three successive voyages, the
last of which occupied four years and was com-
pleted in 1808. Having accumulated some capi-
tal, he retired from the sea and established him-
self as a Boston merchant specializing in trade
with the East and West Indies. Although he
was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1811, by his
energy and integrity in combination with his
first-hand knowledge of trading conditions he
was enabled eventually to amass a fortune and
to win the confidence of his associates. His
shipping interests were severely curtailed by the
War of 1812, but he speedily found an outlet for
his energy and organizing genius in the manu-

Jackson

facture of cotton. Shortly after the outbreak
of the war his brother-in-law, Francis Cabot
Lowell, returned from England full of enthusiasm
for establishing a textile factory. Jackson was
quickly won to the scheme and with Nathan Ap-
pleton and a few close friends organized in 1813
the Boston Manufacturing Company and built a
mill on the Charles River at Waltham. It was
in this mill that the machinery designed and
built by Lowell and Paul Moody was set up and
it was here that for the first time probably in the
world all the operations for converting the raw
cotton into the finished cloth were brought to-
gether in one factory. Jackson was in immediate
charge of the Waltham mills, and he speedily
became so interested in textile manufacture that
he relinquished his other projects. Aided by the
tariff of 1816, the manufacturers extended their
operations at Waltham to include the local power
resources. In 1820 Jackson and his associates,
in search of a location for further extensions,
decided upon East Chelmsford on the Merrimac
River. They purchased the land bordering the
river, erected cotton factories, and christened
the new community Lowell in honor of the origi-
nator of the Waltham factory. Thus the "Man-
chester of America" came into being.

Jackson not only was the prime mover in the
founding of the city of Lowell and the Merrimac
Manufacturing Company, the first concern there,
but he also established the Appleton Company
and was interested in other local enterprises.
The business at Lowell had so increased by 1830
that the problem of communication was acute.
Transportation facilities by way of the Middle-
sex Canal and turnpike were inadequate and
Jackson turned a ready ear to the reports of
steam railways which came from England.
Thoroughly convinced of the practicability of a
steam railroad from Boston to Lowell, he finally
won his friends to the feasibility of the project,
and undertook to supervise personally the con-
struction. His lack of engineering knowledge
led him to act with deliberation and under the
best advice obtainable, but it was his own fore-
sight which led the company to lay a roadbed
wide enough for double tracking. On the com-
pletion of the Boston & Lowell railroad Jackson
looked forward to a well-earned retirement when
a sudden curtailment of his fortune through real-
estate speculation forced him to engage even
more actively in business. The construction of
the Boston & Lowell railroad had necessitated
the filling in of ten acres of swamp flats upon
part of which the Boston station had been built.
To obtain the gravel Jackson had purchased land
on Pemberton Hill and, having leveled it, built

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