Activities

 

Participants imagine the transition from farm to factory life through picking and carding wool, hand-weaving cloth, and analyzing "mill girl" artifacts.

7:30   Depart  

Review Inventing America: A History of the United States, Vol. 1., Chapter 12, pp. 373-405. (2nd ed. 340-366).

Malone, Patrick M. "Canals and Industry." In The Continuing Revolution, Robert Weible, ed., Lowell, MA: Lowell Historical Society, 1991.  pp. 137-153

10:30   Suffolk Mill Tour: Participants examine a water turbine, complete power train, water power and environmental exhibits, and learning stations (with gears, belts/pulleys, flywheels and cams). 

12:45   Dr. Patrick Malone: Harnessing the Merrimack River: Lowell's Dams, Canals, Powerhouses, and Machinery.  Dr. Malone will provide a slide tour of the development of Lowell's water power system and then take participants on tour using National Park Service boats  (Concurrent with Water Power Boat Tour) Water Power Workshop and Boardinghouse Tour: Hands-on workshop to build canal systems and regulate water flow, test the efficiency of water wheels, and determine how much to charge mills for the use of the water.  Costumed interpretive tour of restored Boott Mill boardinghouse.

Reading for Tuesday:  

"A Busy, Bustling, Industrious Population," in Jack Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life 1790-1840.  New York: HarperCollins, 1989.  pp. 15-61.

After an overview provided by Dr. Jack Larkin, NEH Summer Scholars investigate the village in groups, with focus questions and maps. 

Participants cook a meal over fireplaces, eat together, and reflect on differences and similarities between farm and factory life.

Participants return to the village with focus questions focusing on the changing economic times. Jack Larkin, author of The Reshaping of Everyday Life, staffs the bank during afternoon investigations.

Groups report findings from their investigations.  Jack Larkin participates in the culminating discussion.

Review Lowell: The Story of an Industrial City, pp. 30 - 59.

Optional Reading:  Gordon, Wendy M. Mill Girls and Strangers. New York: State University of New York Press, 2002.  Chapter 3.

8:45 Announcements

9:00 Historian Gray Fitzsimons:

Managing Markets, Managing Workers: The Volatility of Textile Manufacturing--Lecၼture and Discussion

10:00 Hands-On Simulation / Museum Exploration
Group I Workers on the Line workshop: Teachers are assigned to an assembly line and experience high wages and increased purchasing power (compared with farm work) followed by market-induced speed-ups, stretch-outs, and lay-offs.  Workers consider alternative ways to gain control over their working conditions and wages. 

Group II Boott Cotton Mills Museum second-floor exhibits (mill work, strikes and protests, unions, workers and managers, child labor, globalization)

10:40
Group I  Boott Cotton Mills Museum exhibits

11:30   Dr. Robert Forrant, UMass Lowell: Labor Responses to the New Industrial Order-Lecture, Discussion

2:30 Dr. Bridget Marshall, UMass Lowell: Using Primary Sources: An Introduction

3:00 Option I, Primary Sources: Annenberg/CPB Debate: Participants use primary source documents to debate the question, "Was Lowell an opportunity for working women or a dead end?" 

Option II Especially for Elementary: "Farm to Factory" curriculum

Option III Curriculum Development Time (Master Teachers and resources available)

4:15   "The World of Barilla Taylor" Activity (Tsongas Center primary source-based curriculum rental kit or Curriculum Development Time (Master Teachers and resources available)

5:30-8 Dinner-Theater: "Three Mill Girls" Marcia Estabrook, performer  

The day's themes are reinforced when participants meet two Lowell mill operatives they have already read about: Mary Paul, who was "pro-mill," and Sarah Bagley, who helped found the Lowell Female Labor Association and who testified before the Massachusetts legislature in favor of limiting the work day to ten hours.  They also meet Mary Harvey, an Irish immigrant mill worker. The program explores aspects of immigration, industrialization, labor history, prejudice, Victorian morals and fashions, and women's history.  Ms. Estabrook will present information about curriculum materials teachers can use before and after her in-school presentations.  

Montrie, Chad. "'I Think Less of the Factory: Than of My Native Dell': Labor, Nature, and the Lowell 'Mill Girls.'" in Making a Living: Work and Environment in the United States. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.  pp. 13-34.

Steinberg, Theodore. Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England.  Amherst: UMass Press, 1994. pp. 1-17.

Excerpts from "Natural History of Massachusetts," "Winter Walk," "Walking," and "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"

Henry David Thoreau. Excerpts from "Nature," "Self-Reliance" and "Wealth," Ralph Waldo Emerson

THURSDAY: Industrialization and Nature: A Comparison of Lowell and Concord

8:30    Announcements
8:45   Dr. Marie Frank, UML: Art and Industrialization: Two Works from NEH’s Picturing America
10:00    Dr. Chad Montrie, UML: Industrial Revolution, Workers, and the Environment: Literary Responses to Industrialization; introduction to day's tours
10:30    Board Bus
10:45    Lowell Bus Tour—The Merrimack’s Pawtucket Falls, the Concord’s Wamesit Falls, and the Lowell Cemetery
Dr. Chad Montrie, UML labor and environmental historian, leads a tour of three key sites in Lowell, exploring how industrialization changed the Lower Concord River and land along its banks, and the ways in which mill labor altered young women workers’ experience with the natural world.  We discover how sculpture reveals history in a “garden cemetery” and read a poem by “mill girl” Barilla Taylor by her gravesite.
11:30    Board Bus for Concord
12:00        Arrive at Minute Man National Historical Park / Lunch / Visit North Bridge / Gift Shop
1:00    “Two Revolutions” at Concord River Overlook: Within view of the Concord River and The Old Manse (home of the Emersons and Hawthornes), Park Ranger Charlie Webster explores the emerging American literary “revolution” and how the American Revolution influenced nineteenth-century views about work and independence.
1:20    Dr. Montrie concludes with remarks that pull together three themes: the changing landscape, industrialization’s effect on the environment, and views of nature and industrialization in mid-nineteenth-century New England. 
 1:30      Board bus and travel to Walden Pond
2:00     “Meet the Author” at Walden Pond (2 groups): Presentation and discussion by Richard Smith who “becomes” Henry David Thoreau at replica of Thoreau’s cabin.  Interpreters lead walks to the site of Thoreau’s cabin where NEH Summer Scholars learn more about Thoreau's Walden experience. 
Group A
2:15-3:00 Round-trip walk to cabin site
3:00-3:30 Meet Henry David Thoreau
3:30-4:00 On your own—visit store or enjoy scenery
Group B
2:15-2:45 On your own—visit store or enjoy scenery
2:45-3:30 Round-trip walk to cabin site
3:30-4:00 Meet Henry David Thoreau
4:00        Return to Lowell
4:45    Curriculum Development Time/Dinner (on your own): In preparation for Friday's activities, dine in one of Lowell’s ethnic restaurants, discuss strategies for teaching about immigration (Friday's theme), and reflect on the week’s activities.

  

Thernstrom, Stephan. Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth-Century City.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965.  Read introduction and Chapter 3, "The Promise of Mobility." 

Lowell National Historical Park Handbook: "Immigrant Lowell," pp. 65-76.

Mitchell, Brian C. The Paddy Camps: The Irish of Lowell 1821-61. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988.  pp. 35-55.

Dublin, Thomas. Women at Work. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.  pp. 145-164. 

Albert, Felix.  Immigrant Odyssey: A French-Canadian Habitant in New England.  Orono: University of Maine Press, 1991. pp. 1-20.

9:00   NPS Historian Gray Fitzsimons: "Immigration, Class, and Industrialization: Lowell's Irish and French Canadians as Case Studies"   Gray Fitzsimons and local historian /master teacher David McKean will take participants on a tour of St. Patrick's Church and "the Acre," Lowell's immigrant neighborhood, and use historical accounts to explore interactions of the first residents of Lowell with the Irish and with the next immigrant work force, the French Canadians.

* use resources or  computer lab and/or consult with curriculum specialists

* preview David Macaulay's Mill Times video, filmed in part in Lowell 

* examine "Millopoly," an economics game in which students play roles as either cotton textile manufacturers, mill workers, or cotton plantation owners

* re-visit Boott or Suffolk Mill, or boardinghouse exhibits

* visit American Textile History Museum, New England Quilt Museum

* view Lowell National Historical Park Multimedia Show (at Visitor Center).