LAWRENCE, a city and the county-seat of Douglas county, Kansas, U.S.A., situated on both banks of the Kansas river, about 40 m. W. of Kansas City. Pop. (1890) 9997, (1900) 10,862, of whom 2032 were negroes, (1910 census) 12,374. It is served by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe and the Union Pacific railways, both having tributary lines extending N. and S. Lawrence is surrounded by a good farming region, and is itself a thriving educational and commercial centre. Its site slopes up from the plateau that borders the river to the heights above, from which there is a view of rare beauty. Among the city’s principal public buildings are the court house and the Y.M.C.A. building. The university of Kansas, situated on Mount Oread, overlooking the city, was first opened in 1866, and in 1907-1908 had a faculty of 105 and 2063 students, including 702 women (see [Kansas]). Just S. of the city of Lawrence is Haskell institute (1884), one of the largest Indian schools in the country, maintained for children of the tribal Indians by the national government. In 1907 the school had 813 students, of whom 313 were girls; it has an academic department, a business school and courses in domestic science, in farming, dairying and gardening, and in masonry, carpentry, painting, blacksmithing, waggon-making, shoemaking, steam-fitting, printing and other trades. Among the city’s manufactures are flour and grist mill products, pianos and cement plaster. Lawrence, named in honour of Amos A. Lawrence, was founded by agents of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company in July 1854, and during the Territorial period was the political centre of the free-state cause and the principal point against which the assaults of the pro-slavery party were directed. It was first known as Wakarusa, from the creek by which it lies. A town association was organized in September 1854 before any Territorial government had been established. In the next month some pro-slavery men presented claims to a part of the land, projected a rival town to be called Excelsior on the same site, and threatened violence; but when Lawrence had organized its “regulators” the pro-slavery men retired and later agreed to a compromise by which the town site was limited to 640 acres. In December 1855 occurred the “Wakarusa war.” A free-state man having been murdered for his opinions, a friend who threatened retaliation was arrested by the pro-slavery sheriff, S. J. Jones; he was rescued and taken to Lawrence; the city disclaimed complicity, but Jones persuaded Governor Wilson Shannon that there was rebellion, and Shannon authorized a posse; Missouri responded, and a pro-slavery force marched on Lawrence. The governor found that Lawrence had not resisted and would not resist the service of writs; by a written “agreement” with the free-state leaders he therefore withdrew his sanction from the Missourians and averted battle. The retreating Missourians committed some homicides. It was during this “war” that John Brown first took up arms with the free-state men. Preparations for another attack continued, particularly after Sheriff Jones, while serving writs in Lawrence, was wounded. On the 21st of May 1856, at the head of several hundred Missourians, he occupied the city without resistance, destroyed its printing offices and the free-state headquarters and pillaged private houses. In 1855 and again in 1857 the pro-slavery Territorial legislature passed an Act giving Lawrence a charter, but the people of Lawrence would not recognize that “bogus” government, and on the 13th of July 1857, after an application to the Topeka free-state legislature for a charter had been denied, adopted a city charter of their own. Governor Walker proclaimed this rebellion against the United States, appeared before the town in command of 400 United States dragoons and declared it under martial law; as perfect order prevailed, and there was no overt resistance to Territorial law, the troops were withdrawn after a few weeks by order of President Buchanan, and in February 1858 the legislature passed an Act legalizing the city charter of July 1857. On the 21st of August 1863 William C. Quantrell and some 400 mounted Missouri bushrangers surprised the sleeping town and murdered 150 citizens. The city’s arms were in storage and no resistance was possible. This was the most distressing episode in all the turbulence of territorial days and border warfare in Kansas. A monument erected in 1895 commemorates the dead. After the free-state men gained control of the Territorial legislature in 1857 the legislature regularly adjourned from Lecompton, the legal capital, to Lawrence, which was practically the capital until the choice of Topeka under the Wyandotte constitution. The first railway to reach Lawrence was the Union Pacific in 1864.
See F. W. Blackmar, “The Annals of an Historic Town,” in the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1893 (Washington, 1894).
LAWRENCE, a city, and one of the three county-seats (Salem and Newburyport are the others) of Essex county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., on both sides of the Merrimac river, about 30 m. from its mouth and about 26 m. N.N.W. of Boston. Pop. (1890) 44,654, (1900) 62,559, of whom 28,577 were foreign-born (7058 being Irish, 6999 French Canadians, 5131 English, 2465 German, 1683 English Canadian), and (1910 census) 85,892. It is served by the Boston & Maine railroad and by electric railways to Andover, Boston, Lowell, Haverhill and Salem, Massachusetts, and to Nashua and Salem, New Hampshire. The city’s area of 6.54 sq. m. is about equally divided by the Merrimac, which is here crossed by a great stone dam 900 ft. long, and, with a fall of 28 ft., supplies about 12,000 horsepower. Water from the river is carried to factories by a canal on each side of the river and parallel to it; the first canal was built on the north side in 1845-1847 and is 1 m. long; the canal on the south side is about ¾ m. long, and was built several years later. There are large and well-kept public parks, a common (17 acres) with a soldiers’ monument, a free public library, with more than 50,000 volumes in 1907, a city hall, county and municipal court-houses, a county gaol and house of correction, a county industrial school and a state armoury.
The value of the city’s factory product was $48,036,593 in 1905, $41,741,980 in 1900. The manufacture of textiles is the most important industry; in 1905 the city produced worsteds valued at $30,926,964 and cotton goods worth $5,745,611, the worsted product being greater than that of any other American city. The Wood worsted mill here is said to be the largest single mill in the world. The history of Lawrence is largely the history of its textile mills. The town was formed in 1845 from parts of Andover (S. of the Merrimac) and of Methuen (N. of the river), and it was incorporated as a town in 1847, being named in honour of Abbott Lawrence, a director of the Essex company, organized in 1845 (on the same day as the formation of the town) for the control of the water power and for the construction of the great dam across the Merrimac. The Bay State woollen mills, which in 1858 became the Washington mills, and the Atlantic cotton mills were both chartered in 1846. The Pacific mills (1853) introduced from England in 1854 Lister combs for worsted manufacture; and the Washington mills soon afterward began to make worsted dress goods. Worsted cloths for men’s wear seem to have been made first about 1870 at nearly the same time in the Washington mills here, in the Hockanum mills of Rockville, Connecticut, and in Wanskuck mills, Providence, Rhode Island. The Pemberton mills, built in 1853, collapsed and afterwards took fire on the 10th of January 1860; 90 were killed and hundreds severely injured. Lawrence was chartered as a city in 1853, and annexed a small part of Methuen in 1854 and parts of Andover and North Andover in 1879.
See H. A. Wadsworth, History of Lawrence, Massachusetts (Lawrence, 1880).
LAWRENCEBURG, a city and the county-seat of Dearborn county, Indiana, U.S.A., on the Ohio river, in the S.E. part of the state, 22 m. (by rail) W. of Cincinnati. Pop. (1890) 4284, (1900) 4326 (413 foreign-born); (1910) 3930. Lawrenceburg is served by the Baltimore & Ohio South-Western and the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis railways, by the Cincinnati, Lawrenceburg & Aurora electric street railroad, and by river packets to Louisville and Cincinnati. The city lies along the river and on higher land rising 100 ft. above river-level. It formerly had an important river trade with New Orleans, beginning about 1820 and growing in volume after the city became the terminus of the Whitewater canal, begun in 1836. The place was laid out in 1802. In 1846 an “old” and a “new” settlement were united, and Lawrenceburg was chartered as a city. Lawrenceburg was the birthplace of James B. Eads, the famous engineer, and of John Coit Spooner (b. 1843), a prominent Republican member of the United States Senate from Wisconsin in 1885-1891 and in 1897-1907; and the Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceburg was the first charge (1837-1839) of Henry Ward Beecher.