 Previous to incorporating as the Essex Company, the group of men had been known as the "Boston Associates" and had made similar developments upstream in Lowell, where a dam of similar (but smaller) size had already been built, giving rise to that industrial city.The plans set forth by the Essex Company, for the dam and surrounding industrialization, were so popular that it took less than one month to acquire capital of 1 million dollars.Gilmore & Carpenter won the contract to build the dam.