Paul Moody was born on May 23, 1779, in Byfield Parish, Newbury, Massachusetts. He was the sixth son of Capt. Paul and Mary Moody. His father, a man of influence in Newbury, was a Byfield volunteer at Lexington, March 1776, and commanded a company of sixty-eight Newbury men in the Revolutionary War.
At the age of twelve, Paul evinced an interest in mechanics and entered a woolen factory at Waltham to learn the art of weaving.
Moody found employment in a nail-making plant in By field; in fact, for several years, he went from one establishment to another where mill machinery was in use, and by close study and handling of machines became a master mechanic. He entered a co-partnership with Ezra Worthen in the operation of a cotton mill of that town. His contacts during the succeeding fourteen years' management of this plant were with those New Englanders who were ambitious to develop domestic manufacture so as to avoid foreign dependence. Accordingly when Francis C. Lowell formed the Boston Manufacturing Company about 1814, to manufacture cotton-mill and other machinery, Moody joined him in establishing the plant at Waltham, Massachusetts Here he remained for the succeeding eleven years, repairing and manufacturing machinery and inventing a number of improvements.
On March 9, 1816, Moody secured a patent for a new mechanism to wind yarn from bobbins or spools; on January 17, 1818, he perfected soapstone rollers for Horrocks' dressing machine and doubled its efficacy; he improved the "double-speeder" for roping cotton and obtained a patent April 3, 1819; and, finally, on January 19 and February 19, 1821, respectively, he was granted patents for machines to make cotton roping and to rope and spin cotton. Moody's contributions did much to bring to its highest efficiency the Waltham system of cotton manufacture. In 1823, he went to East Chelmsford, now Lowell, Massachusetts, to superintend the building of new cotton-mills there. A large machine shop, called the Lowell Machine Works, was also established, and after its completion in 1825, Moody, together with a full force of experienced men, was transferred from Waltham to Lowell. Here under his direction the manufacture of cotton machinery was continued and new and improved designs of machinery perfected. In a comparatively short time the shop was manufacturing every item of equipment needed for the operation of a cotton-mill, and its reputation for good designs and workmanship was the highest in the country. Moody, however, enjoyed but little of the reward, for he died suddenly after a three-day illness, when only fifty-two years of age.
On July 13, 1800, Moody married Susannah Morrill of Amesbury.
