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The Town & the City: Lowell before and after The Civil War

Originally created to be a digital archive for Lowell documents from 1826 to 1861, this website has grown to cover many periods and events in Lowell's history.

The Lowell Directory

Town/City Directories 1832 to 1861 in Archive.org

City Directories 1864 onward in Archive.org

City Directories on this site (1837, 1842, 1844, 1845, 1849; 1851)

1860 is a business directory only; no resident names and addresses.

City Directories were not published in the following years - 1843, 1846, 1848, 1850, 1852, 1854, 1856, 1857

Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools. If it is proposed to inculcate some truth or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form a society. 
Alexis de Tocqueville, 1831
 
Benjamin Floyd, 1832
 
 

Town/City Directories 1832 to 1861

        Lowell Directories (on archive.org)
Please note: some of the published directories are not currently available on archive.org
Also, there are years when a directory was not published

City Directories 1864 onward

1864-65 (including Lowell Military Record for The Civil War)

1866

1868

1870

1875-76

1886

1894

1900

1906

1916

1926

1931

1936

1946

1950

1956

1966

1975

1985

Directories on this site

Index to 1837 Directory

1837

1842

1844

There were 2 copies of the 1844 Directory available for digitization. One copy had ads on the front and back covers. The other had an added cover. The edition with the added cover is in better condition, so the pages of this one was digitized. Just the front and back cover of the other with the ads was digitized.

1845

1849

1851

1860 - Lowell Register and Business Directory