Robert Rantoul Jr. on the order of President John Tyler. For his last statewide office, Lincoln won two terms to the state senate beginning in 1844, serving as the body's president. Growth of Worcester Lincoln inherited sizable properties in central Worcester from his father, and his development activities of these and other lands he acquired had a major impact on the city's character in the 19th century. He purchased and donated to the city the land that became Elm Park; it and the adjacent neighborhood form the Lincoln Estate-Elm Park Historic District. When Worcester was smaller, there had been little class division between its various neighborhoods; however, those that Lincoln laid out on the west side of the city became the place the wealthier elements of Worcester society chose to live. From the 1820s to the 1840s Worcester, at first a town of modest size, experienced significant growth. This was stimulated by first the construction of the Blackstone Canal and then the railroad, which connected it to Boston. The town experienced rapid industrial growth and a growing diversification of its population, especially by Irish Americans who had helped build the canal. There was political tension between the older elites, Lincoln among them, and the rising industrial working class. The arrival of Irish immigrants in the 1840s led to an increase in street gang activity and violence as the social systems of the town strained to deal with the influx. This led to calls for the town to receive a city charter, which was granted by the state in 1848. In the first mayoral election held that year, Lincoln ran against Rodney Miller, a local temperance advocate around whom opposition to the town's elites coalesced. Lincoln carried the election by more than ten percent, and became the new city's first mayor. He held the post for one year, during which he played host to Abraham Lincoln, a distant relation from Illinois who was electioneering for Zachary Taylor on the Whig ticket in the 1848 presidential election. (Worcester was carried by Free Soil candidate Martin Van Buren, although Taylor won the election.) After one year as mayor, Lincoln retired from politics. He remained active in a large number of civic organizations including the American Antiquarian Society, of which he was a founding member in 1812, and later vice president from 1854 to 1868, the Worcester Agricultural Society, and the Massachusetts Historical Society.