 Initially known as "The Merrimack Water Power Association" (1843) under Samuel Lawrence and Daniel Saunders, the association had identified that "there lay a tract of land resting upon foundations of imperishable blue stone and so shaped and environed by nature as to be a rare site for a permanent dam and a connected system of canals, and for the building of a manufacturing city"; this tract was at Bodwell's Falls.In 1845, Abbott Lawrence, Nathan Appleton, Patrick T. Jackson, John A. Lowell, Ignatius Sargent, William Sturgis and Charles S. Storrow incorporated as the Essex Company with a charter to develop water power for planned textile mills along the Merrimack River by building a dam at the preferred site.In addition to being a company director, Storrow was the lead engineer for the Essex Company and is credited as the designer and engineer of the dam.