Nehemiah Corporation of America
Nehemiah Corporation of America is a non-profit organization based in Sacramento, California specializing in homeownership, affordable housing and community development. It started in 1994 as a small organization, but grew to prominence later in the 1990s after it developed a program that allowed home buyers to make down payments on their purchases using funds that were derived from the home sellers. This program, the Nehemiah Program, became popular and was widely emulated, giving birth to what came to be known as the seller-funded down-payment assistance industry. The industry attracted criticism from U.S. federal agencies (particularly the Government Accountability Office and the Internal Revenue Service) and was ultimately shut down in 2008 by a change in federal law.
Nashua Manufacturing Company
Nashua was one of several towns that blossomed along the Merrimack River to take advantage of water power in the early days of the Industrial Revolution; the most notable of these today are the Merrimack mills (founded 1821) at Lowell, Massachusetts where the American Textile History Museum is located, and the Amoskeag mills (founded 1825) at Manchester, New Hampshire, where the Millyard Museum is located. The Nashua Manufacturing Company was incorporated in 1823 on the initiative of Daniel Abbot (today considered the "father of Nashua", he renamed the town from Dunstable, New Hampshire to Nashua in 1803). He and several other local tradesmen began the company after quietly buying up land from the banks of the Merrimack along the Nashua River up to Mine Falls, as they planned to use the falls to power their mills, rather than the Merrimack. They hired Asher Benjamin to design the mills, including churches and a grid of streets. They modelled their plans on the experiment at Lowell with the Lowell Mill Girls. They were highly successful, and after digging the Nashua power canal were able to build more mill buildings and hire more labor, resulting in the town's population rising from 100 to 1200 in the years 1824-1828.