Historic leaves, volume 3, April, 1904 - January, 1905

[10] thought the railroad would not be successful, but they soon gave up such thoughts, if they entertained them; and on October 3, 1859, the Supreme Court issued a decree that the proprietors had ‘forfeited all their franchises and privileges by reason of nonfeasance, non-user, misfeasance, and neglect.’ Thus the corporation was forever extinguished, and went out like a spark.

The canal was not a great financial success, owing to the large sum of money spent in its construction and the continued expense in keeping its bridges, locks, boats, and banks in repair.

To the student interested in noting the actual footprints of progress, old Middlesex Village, adjoining Lowell, and which flourished before the latter was thought of, furnishes subjects for contemplation. In the now quiet hamlet, where trade was once active and manufacturing kept many busy, still stands the office of the collector of the old Middlesex canal. It is a very small structure, and in very good repair, and is surrounded by traces of the enterprise that called it into being. (A few rods away to the north runs the Merrimac river, skirted by the Lowell & Nashua railroad—now a part of the Boston & Maine. The latter stands like a sentry, as it were, forbidding the corpse of the old canal it has slain to rise again; yet, even in death, the old Middlesex canal is remembered by its ancient friend, the Merrimac, whose waters ebb and flow in a narrow culvert connecting the river with the shrub-grown valley which marks the bed of the almost forgotten canal.) The door of this office is unlocked by a huge key, suggestive of other days. The interior is divided into two apartments, one of which was reserved for the collector, and the other for the boatmen and those requiring passports. The little window through which the passports were handed is still there, and not a pane of it disturbed. South of the collector's office stands a tall, Lombardy poplar, another valuable relic, for it calls to mind the banks studded with these odd-looking trees, whose roots once gave stability to the shores of the canal. Several other buildings of interest still stand in historic Middlesex.

The canal is now well defined through the country as one is traveling on the road to Lowell. At Medford the Woburn