Patrick Tracy Jackson was an American manufacturer.
Background
Jackson was born on August 14, 1780, in Newburyport, Massachusetts, the youngest son of Jonathan and Hannah (Tracy) Jackson. James (1777-1867) and Charles Jackson were his brothers. His maternal grandfather, 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.
Education
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.
Career
Skill and industry soon won him the confidence of his master and before Jackson 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 generously relinquished his claims of apprenticeship to enable the boy to take advantage of the opportunity. Following this trip Jackson took command of ship and cargo for three successive voyages, the last of which occupied four years and was completed in 1808. Having accumulated some capital, he retired from the sea and established himself 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 manufacture 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 Appleton 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 together 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 originator of the Waltham factory. Thus the "Manchester 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 Middlesex 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 construction. His lack of engineering knowledge led him to act with deliberation and under the best advice obtainable, but it was his own foresight which led the company to lay a roadbed wide enough for double tracking. On the completion of the Boston & Lowell railroad Jackson looked forward to a well-earned retirement when a sudden curtailment of his fortune through realestate 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 houses on Pemberton Square, Tremont Row, and Somerset Street, a speculation which quickly collapsed in the panic of 1837. The death in that year of Kirk Boott, perhaps the ablest of the early Lowell mill managers, and his own somewhat straitened financial condition, led Jackson to take over again the active administration of several Lowell enterprises, which he conducted with undiminished brilliancy. This intense activity in his later years, however, told on his health and Jackson was unable to resist an attack of dysentery which brought death at his seaside home at Beverly, Massachusetts, on September 12, 1847.
Achievements
Jackson is best remembered as one of the founders of the Boston Manufacturing Company of Waltham, Massachusetts, and later a founder of the Merrimack Manufacturing Company, whose developments formed the nucleus of Lowell, Massachusetts.
Personality
Spare but strong of frame, taller than the average and with light hair and blue eyes, Jackson was a man of distinguished presence. From his Irish grandfather he inherited a quick temper but a cheerful and sympathetic disposition, a characteristic which won him many friends.
Connections
Jackson was married, on November 1, 1810, in Boston, to Lydia Cabot by whom he had nine children.
Father:
Jonathan Jackson
He was an American merchant from Newburyport, Massachusetts.
