Part of the wonder of living in New England is the
history that surrounds our everyday life. At times we take it for granted. Often it becomes a critical a piece
of our family lore, but we forget to step back and examine it closely.
My family story was woven with the threads of the
history of the Blackstone River Valley. Most of my extensive family members
(with surnames of Taft, Bruce, Allen, and Higgins) were born only steps and
miles from the actual banks of the Blackstone River that winds from
Worcester to Providence and into the Narragansett Bay.
I was raised on stories that my
mother told of the depressed towns and neighborhoods of the
Blackstone Valley. The end of WWII and the rise of different industries
closed the Blackstone River Valley mills and with those closures came
unemployment. Young people like my
mother sought better lives elsewhere. Huge brick factories crumbled
and they became eyesores in the middle of cities, towns and
villages. The Draper Corporation in Hopedale, Massachusetts employed several of
my family members, but they too ceased operations in
the mid 1970s. Since 2009, that abandoned factory in
the center of a picturesque New England village has
been a reminder of the heyday of American textile manufacturing.
Yet, the story of the Blackstone River
Valley is simply an astonishing piece of American history. The river provided the power for
the very first American factory – the Slater Mill at Pawtucket Falls,
Rhode Island. The Industrial Revolution found its way from England to the
United States and that first American cotton-spinning
factory powered by water was completed in 1793 on the banks of the Blackstone
River.
From there, 24 towns and cities hosted textile mill
sites up the river through the towns of Cumberland and Woonsocket, Rhode Island
and Blackstone, Hopedale, Upton, Grafton and Millbury,
Massachusetts. Where once the Nipmuc, Wampanoag and Narragansett
tribes lived on banks that provided fish and drinking water, hundreds of mills
were constructed using the power of that water as it flowed
downstream.
Before the Great Depression brought down the New
England mills in the 1930s, Woonsocket, RI and Hopedale, MA and other mill
towns were hubs of activity. With this industrialization also came entrepreneurial greed
as the falls were channeled, power harnessed and the river diverted. New
Englanders used the example of the Erie Canal to the north, and in the 1820s
the Massachusetts and Rhode Island legislators voted to build The
Blackstone Canal. It was created to speed the movement of both cotton and
raw materials and finished goods. . By 1828, the canal was complete
and connected the mill villages that led from Worcester to Providence. The
railroads soon followed and with them came a community of mill workers who
relocated there from all of upper New England and Canada.
The story was duplicated all over New England and on
other rivers – in Lowell, in Fitchburg and in towns across New Hampshire and
Maine. However, Rhode Island remained
the most industrialized state in the country.
The Blackstone River became one of the most polluted rivers in New
England and remained so through the 1970s. In the years since, cleanup efforts
and historical preservation has made the Blackstone River Valley a worthy
historical landmark. In 1986, through an act of Congress, the Blackstone River
Valley National Heritage Corridor was created to “preserve and interpret for
present and future generations the unique and significant value of the
Blackstone Valley.”
Woonsocket, Rhode Island hosted dozens of mills
by the middle of the 19th century. The Museum of Work and Culture in downtown
Woonsocket is one of the gems that often remains hidden from New Englanders,
especially those of us in Massachusetts who speed by on our way to Providence
or Newport or points further south. Most of us forget that the tiniest of
states has one of the richest histories in our country.
In “Landscape of Industry: An Industrial History of
the Blackstone Valley” (2009 by the Worcester Historical Museum), a dozen
distinguished authors (historians and park service rangers) describe the
changes in the landscape, the economy, and the social fabric that arrived with
the Industrial Revolution as it first swept the nation in the 1800s. The essays describe the tremendous rise of
the factory towns dotting the banks of the river, the migration of
boys, girls, men and women to these New England towns and their struggle
for workers’ rights.
In the book’s introduction, Joseph Cullon describes
the rich and colorful geographic tapestry created by the Blackstone
River as it winds its way 46 miles from Worcester to Pawtucket. He explains how the waters from over 500
square miles of Massachusetts and Rhode Island contribute to the river’s
strength as it drops 438 feet along its way south. His essay and others in
the book are accompanied by intriguing full-page maps and photographs of
the restored mills as they stand today.
Some of the most interesting illustrations in this
fascinating book are of town maps of Whitinsville, Mendon, Worcester and
others. There are many diagrams and drawings of the mills
themselves. Dozens of photographs taken in the 19th and 20th centuries
accompany the essays and many of them depict scenes of the
mills as they stand today – restored as homes and offices.
The pattern of New England industry – beseeching
families to send their sons and daughters to work in the factories providing
textiles to the world – began right here just west of Norwood and Norfolk
County. A short drive past route 495 brings us to towns where many of these
mills sit empty – or are restored or repurposed. A trip to some of the Blackstone River Valley
National Heritage Corridor historical sites is a must with out-of-town
visitors. One of the best ways to travel it is on the paved bike trails –
a 48-mile Blackstone River Bikeway with sections completed in Rhode Island
along the Blackstone Canal. The Rhode Island Historical Society has restored
the Slater Mill in Pawtucket and opens the Museum of Work and Culture in
Woonsocket daily throughout the year.
For further reading about New England mill life, one
of the best chronicles of the history of the New England factories is “The
Belles of New England: The Women of the Textile Mills and the Families Whose
Wealth They Wove” (2002) by William Moran.
“Loom and Spindle: Or Life Amongst the Early Mill Girls” by Harriet H.
Robinson has been republished by Applewood Books. Robinson describes her life as a mill girl in
Lowell, Massachusetts. An interesting thesis of Robinson’s book is that the
factory girls gave rise to a population of more cultured, sophisticated,
independent and educated New England women.
