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Mill Girls

by James Cummings

If you talk with any native New Englander you will probably find that somewhere in the family tree there was at least one mill girl. The Industrial Revolution was started in America by Samuel Slater, in the Blackstone River Valley of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. One can get quite a history of this start at the Slater Museum in Pawtucket. Another mill city, Lowell, Massachusetts, has a National Heritage Park which encompasses several old Mill buildings, one of which was a boarding house for the mill workers, including the famous mill girl poet and activist, Lucy Larcom.

Mill Girl Statue, Manchester, NH

The Mill Girl statue above was  created by Antoinette Prien Schultze, a well-known New England sculptor. The project was finished  in 1988, and is located at the former site of the Amoskeag Mill in Manchester, NH.  photo by James Cummings

Migration from the Farms of Quebec

My great grandparents came down from the impoverished farms of Quebec to work in the Lowell mills at the end of the nineteenth century. Great grandmere, as my grandfather told the story, ran a rooming house for the workers and she also made good money renting out rooms by the hour. In those days, you had to do whatever was necessary to get by. She began to get more English speaking customers and thought that she should learn to speak English, but she wouldn't stick to it so my grandfather stopped speaking French to her and wouldn't respond at all, unless she spoke English.

Citizen Could Not Re-Enter Canada

She had been getting on in years and wanted to make another trip to Quebec to see the relatives before they all died. She had never bothered to become a United States citizen, as it was no problem to come into the country from Canada in the early days and stay to work, but World War II was going on and my grandfather told her she had better get her papers or she wouldn't be able to get back in the country. She was as stubborn as only an old French woman could be and got on the train and went to Canada. Lo and behold, she could not get back into the country.

 

My grandfather figured if any one could take care of this, it was Uncle Frank. Uncle Frank had run a lot of whiskey in from Canada and during prohibition, ran a speakeasy . He made a bundle and was a big contributor to the Democratic party in Massachusetts. He told my grandfather that he would take care of the problem and it wouldn't cost anything either, as he could well afford it, and many people owed him favors. He said to make sure that the stubborn old woman got her citizenship papers when she got back (six months later), and she did.

 

Work at the Amoskeag Mills and International Shoe Company

Pat's mother and father both worked in part of the mill system along the Merrimack River in Manchester, NH, in the office of the International Shoe Company, where they met and courted. Pat's mother was born in Georgia and her parents had come to Manchester on the train with five of their children (they eventually had eleven). Her grandparents were from Vienna, Austria.

No one has ever verified their reason for coming north, but we assume that work opportunities were more plentiful in the northeast.  Recently, Pat learned that her grandfather had been employed at the Amoskeag Mills as a cotton "mulespinner." Pat's mother recalled that the work was difficult for him. Her father was as an American veteran, disabled by malaria after having served in the Phillipines in the 1890s. The malady weakened him, and he did not have the physical stamina to work in the mills for very long. All of the relatives mentioned here were either first or second generation immigrants from either Canada, Austria, or Ireland.

 

The mill museums of New England are wonderful, educational places to visit. Lowell is a great destination because, in addition to the National Heritage Park, it also has the New England Quilt Museum and The American Textile History Museum.  The Industrial Revolution in America was powered first by Yankee farm girls, and then by the men and women from Quebec, Canada, Sweden, Ireland, Poland, Greece and other countries. You can walk the floors of these factories, hear the machinery at the Boott's Mill in Lowell, and read descriptions alongside photographs and other displays. At the Millyard Museum in Manchester, one can listen to videotaped stories as told by some of the last mill workers there. If you are from New England, some of these stories may be those of your forebears.

Note

An additional article that Patricia wrote, about the 1830s mill girls of Lowell is posted on our website. "The Mill Girls of Spindle City," was first published in The Quilter magazine, January 2004.

©Copyright 2001. James Cummings, Quilter's Muse Publications, Concord, NH.

To read some excellent history information about the Irish and their emigration to America, visit this website: http://www.kinsella.org/history/histira.htm

 

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Online since 2002. Patricia and James Cummings, Quilter's Muse Publications, Concord, NH.

 

pat@quiltersmuse.com