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Lynn Public Library
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Lynn, now the largest city in Essex County, is an urban manufacturing and commercial center, densely populated and culturally diverse. Residents are proud of the city's long history, which parallels the history of New England as a whole.
Lynn was incorporated as a town in 1629, and as a city 1850, as her population exploded. Today Lynn continues to thrive and flourish as a community of hard-working people. Its population of 89,050 is spread over just 10.47 square miles (8,505.25 people per square mile), and requires 6 zip codes. Lynn is governed by a city government.
Although Lynn was primarily an agricultural community, leather tanning became a major industry very early on. By 1775 there were a string of tanneries along Black Marsh Brook, called Tanney Brook, to the harbor. When the Eastern Railroad was extended from Boston to Salem in 1837, it passed through Lynn, encouraging growth in the shoe industry. A factory district soon developed along with neighborhoods of shoe workers living in boardinghouses.
Lynn’s citizens were skilled in making leather shoes, the proceeds from which were used to purchase the other necessities of life. A Quaker named Ebineezer Breed persuaded other Europeans to settle in Lynn to make the town an important shoe center of the new world. Breed was also successful in convincing Congress to place a protective tariff on the shoes made in Lynn, thereby helping to make the town the ladies’ shoe center of the world. In 1892, the Lynn-based Thomson-Houston Electric Company merged with the Edison general Electric Company to form the General Electric Company which is still a major employer in Lynn today.
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