channel has been filling up and its banks have been falling away.

In 1801, Moses Hale, whose father had long before started a fulling-mill
in Dracut, established a carding-mill on River Meadow Brook,--the first
enterprise of the kind in Middlesex County.

In 1805, the bridge across the Merrimack was demolished and a new bridge
with stone piers and abutments was constructed. It was a toll-bridge as
late as 1860.

The second war with England stimulated manufacturing enterprises
throughout the United States; and several were started, depending upon
the water-power of the Concord River. In 1813, Captain Phineas Whiting
and Major Josiah Fletcher erected a wooden cotton-mill on the site of
the Middlesex Company's mills, and were successful in their enterprise.
John Golding, in the same neighborhood, was not so fortunate.

[Illustration: JOHN-STREET CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH.]

The year 1815 is memorable for the most disastrous gale that has
devastated New England during two centuries; it was very severe in
Chelmsford.

The sawmill and gristmill of the Messrs. Bowers, at Pawtucket Falls, was
started in 1816. The same year Nathan Tyler started a gristmill where
the Middlesex Company's mill No. 3 now stands. Captain John Ford's
sawmill stood near the junction of the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.

In 1818, Moses Hale started the powder-mills on Concord River. The
following year Oliver M. Whipple and William Tileston were associated