The Lowell post office opened in 1837, the earliest record of the town by name. Another post office, Carroll (1830), opened inside today’s town and later closed.
2020 census: 565189 years
Founding year: the first Lowell post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
What stands out about Lowell’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
The first European settlers to the land that would become Lowell arrived in the late 18th century after the 1787 Northwest Ordinance opened the territory for settlement. Soon after the Ordinance took effect, the Ohio Company of Associates purchased 1,500,000 acres (6,100 km2) of land along the Muskingum River and proceeded to survey the area. The first settlement in what would become the state of Ohio was Marietta, founded in 1788 near the mouth of the Muskingum about 14 miles (23 km) downstream from the site that would become Lowell. By 1789, settlement had spread north to the area where the Cats Creek enters the Muskingum River.
Passages that mention Lowell, cut from the printed page as they were published.
history of washington county, ohio1881 · page 556Read the page →
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as the murder of Sherman Waterman, although that event caused great anxiety in the frail garrison located nearly opposite the site of the present town of Buell’s Lowell. The inhatitants of this garrison were four families and four single men, all of whom owned land in the vicinity and employed the time during the first summer at clearing and building cabins. The garrisoned cabins which stood near each other on the river bank belonged
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history of washington county, ohio1881 · page 560Read the page →
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Hoyt purchased a lot and built a house. The population of the hill districts is, at the present time, more than eighty per cent. German. Fearing and Adams are the German townships of the county. The village of Lowell is more than sixty per cent. German, and it is to the people of this nationality, that the township owes a large proportion of its wealth. A Philip Mattern, county commissioner and postmaster
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History of Marietta and Washington County, Ohio1902 · page 292Read the page →
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Lowell can lx>ast that there is more business transacted within its borders than in any other town of its size and many larger ones along tlie Muskingum River.
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Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
By decade
Lowell, decade by decade
One decade in the archive so far: the 1880s. Scroll each row; tap a photo for its story.
Nothing in the archives for these yearsWeddings on Main Street, storms, parades, school pictures, the old store. If it’s in your family album, it belongs here.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikimedia Commons (6), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
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