Lynn

Lynn, a city and seaport of Essex county, Massachusetts, 9 m. N.E. of Boston, on the N. shore of Massachusetts Bay. Pop. (1900) 68,513, of whom 17,742 were foreign-born (6609 being English Canadians, 5306 Irish, 1527 English and 1280 French Canadians), and 784 were negroes; (1910 census) 89,336. It is served by the Boston & Maine and the Boston, Revere Beach & Lynn railways, and by an interurban electric railway, and has an area of 10.85 sq. m. The business part is built near the shore on low, level ground, and the residential sections are on the higher levels. Lynn Woods, a beautiful park, covers more than 2000 acres. On the shore, which has a fine boulevard, is a state bath house. The city has a handsome city hall, a free public library, founded in 1862, a soldiers’ monument and two hospitals. Lynn is primarily a manufacturing city. The first smelting works in New England were established here in 1643. More important and earlier was the manufacture of boots and shoes, an industry introduced in 1636 by Philip Kertland, a Buckingham man; a corporation of shoemakers existed here in 1651, whose papers were lost in 1765. There were many court orders in the seventeenth century to butchers, tanners, bootmakers and cordwainers; and the business was made more important by John Adam Dagyr (d. 1808), a Welshman who came here in 1750 and whose work was equal to the best in England. In 1767 the output was 80,000 pairs; in 1795 about 300,000 pairs of women’s shoes were made by 600 journeymen and 200 master workmen. The product of women’s shoes had become famous in 1764, and about 1783 the use of morocco had been introduced by Ebenezer Breed. In 1900 and 1905 Lynn was second only to Brockton among the cities of the United States in the value of boots and shoes manufactured, and outranked Brockton in the three allied industries, the manufacture of boots and shoes, of cut stock and of findings. In the value of its total manufactured product Lynn ranked second to Boston in the state in 1905, having been fifth in 1900; the total number of factories in 1905 was 431; their capital was $23,139,185; their employees numbered 21,540; and their product was valued at $55,003,023 (as compared with $39,347,493 in 1900). Patent medicines and compounds and the manufacture of electrical machinery are prominent industries. The Lynn factories of the General Electric Company had in 1906 an annual product worth between $15,000,000 and $20,000,000. The foreign export of manufactured products is estimated at $5,000,000 a year.

Lynn was founded in 1629 and was called Saugus until 1637, when the present name was adopted, from Lynn Regis, Norfolk, the home of the Rev. Samuel Whiting (1597-1679), pastor at Lynn from 1636 until his death. From Lynn Reading was separated in 1644, Lynnfield in 1782, Saugus in 1815, and, after the incorporation of the city of Lynn in 1850, Swampscott in 1852, and in 1853 Nahant, S. of Lynn, on a picturesque peninsula and now a fashionable summer resort.

See James R, Newhall, History of Lynn (Lynn, 1883), and H. K. Sanderson, Lynn in the Revolution (1910).