Manchester is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Hampshire and in northern New England. At the 2020 census, it had a population of 115,644.
Samuel Slater was an early English-American industrialist known as the "Father of the American Industrial Revolution", a phrase coined by Andrew Jackson, and the "Father of the American Factory System". In the United Kingdom, he was called "Slater the Traitor" and "Sam the Slate" because he brought British textile technology to the United States, modifying it for American use. He stole the textile factory machinery designs as an apprentice to a pioneer in the British industry before migrating to the U.S. at the age of 21.
A mill town, also known as factory town or mill village, is typically a settlement that developed around one or more mills or factories, usually cotton mills or factories producing textiles.
A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system.
Textile manufacture during the British Industrial Revolution was centred in south Lancashire and the towns on both sides of the Pennines in the United Kingdom. The main drivers of the Industrial Revolution were textile manufacturing, iron founding, steam power, oil drilling, the discovery of electricity and its many industrial applications, the telegraph and many others. Railroads, steamboats, the telegraph and other innovations massively increased worker productivity and raised standards of living by greatly reducing time spent during travel, transportation and communications.
The Waltham-Lowell system was a labor and production model employed during the rise of the textile industry in the United States, particularly in New England, during the rapid expansion of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century.
The textile industry is primarily concerned with the design, production and distribution of textiles: yarn, cloth and clothing. The raw material may be natural, or synthetic using products of the chemical industry.
The Amoskeag Falls are a set of waterfalls on the Merrimack River in Manchester, New Hampshire, United States.
Gill Stadium is a sporting stadium located in Manchester, New Hampshire. It is one of the oldest concrete-and-steel ballparks in the United States. The venue, which mainly hosts amateur baseball and football contests, has a capacity of 3,012.
The Nashua Manufacturing Company was a cotton textile manufacturer in Nashua, New Hampshire, that operated from 1823 to 1945. It was one of several textile companies that helped create what became the city of Nashua, creating roads, churches and its own bank as part of the process. Like most New England textile mills it struggled during the Depression. It shut in 1947, when much of the industry had moved South for cheaper labor and land.
The Boston Manufacturing Company was a business that operated one of the first factories in America. It was organized in 1813 by Francis Cabot Lowell, a wealthy Boston merchant, in partnership with a group of investors later known as The Boston Associates, for the manufacture of cotton textiles. It built the first integrated spinning and weaving factory in the world at Waltham, Massachusetts, using water power. They used plans for a power loom that he smuggled out of England as well as trade secrets from the earlier horse-powered Beverly Cotton Manufactory, of Beverly, Massachusetts, of 1788. This was the largest factory in the U.S., with a workforce of about 300. It was a very efficient, highly profitable mill that, with the aid of the Tariff of 1816, competed effectively with British textiles at a time when many smaller operations were being forced out of business. While the Rhode Island System that followed was famously employed by Samuel Slater, the Boston Associates improved upon it with the "Waltham System". The idea was successfully copied at Lowell, Massachusetts, and elsewhere in New England. Many rural towns now had their own textile mills.
The Lowell mill girls were young female workers who came to work in textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts during the Industrial Revolution in the United States. The workers initially recruited by the corporations were daughters of New England farmers, typically between the ages of 14 and 35. By 1840, at the height of the Textile Revolution, the Lowell textile mills had recruited over 8,000 workers, with women making up nearly three-quarters of the mill workforce.
The history of Lowell, Massachusetts, is closely tied to its location along the Pawtucket Falls of the Merrimack River, from being an important fishing ground for the Pennacook tribe to providing water power for the factories that formed the basis of the city's economy for a century. The city of Lowell was started in the 1820s as a money-making venture and social project referred to as "The Lowell Experiment", and quickly became the United States' largest textile center. However, within approximately a century, the decline and collapse of that industry in New England placed the city into a deep recession. Lowell's "rebirth", partially tied to Lowell National Historical Park, has made it a model for other former industrial towns, although the city continues to struggle with deindustrialization and suburbanization.
District A is a historic worker housing district located in Manchester, New Hampshire, near the former Amoskeag Manufacturing Company millyard. It is bounded by Pleasant, State, Granite, and Bedford streets, and includes seven surviving tenement blocks built by Amoskeag between 1843 and 1852. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 12, 1982.
District B is a historic worker housing district located in Manchester, New Hampshire, United States, near the former Amoskeag Manufacturing Company millyard. It is roughly bounded by Canal, Mechanic, Franklin, and Pleasant Streets, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 12, 1982. It contains 32 contributing properties, including seventeen rowhouse tenement blocks built mainly between 1838 and 1850, in an area of approximately 170 acres (69 ha).
District C is a historic worker housing district located in Manchester, New Hampshire, near the former Amoskeag Manufacturing Company millyard, and surrounding area. It is roughly bounded by N. Hampshire Lane, Hollis, Canal, and Bridge streets, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 12, 1982. It originally contained nine rowhouses in an area of approximately 5 acres (2 ha); three have subsequently been demolished and replaced by an apartment complex.
District D is a historic worker housing district located in Manchester, New Hampshire, near the former Amoskeag Manufacturing Company millyard. It is roughly bounded by Canal, Langdon, Elm, and West Brook streets, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 12, 1982. It contains three residential buildings constructed in 1864 in an area of about 3 acres (1 ha).
District E is a historic worker housing district in Manchester, New Hampshire, near the former Amoskeag Manufacturing Company millyard, at 258-322 McGregor Street on the west bank of the Merrimack River. It consists of five single-family houses, built in 1882 for overseers at the mills. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 12, 1982.
The Merrimack Valley is a bi-state region along the Merrimack River in the U.S. states of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The Merrimack is one of the larger waterways in New England and has helped to define the livelihood and culture of those living along it for millennia.
The New England Textile Strike was a strike led by members of the United Textile Workers of America (UTW) principally in the U.S. states of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Throughout the duration of the strike, an estimated 68,000-85,000 workers refused to work. Alongside the UTW, the IWW and ATW played major organizing roles within it, with the strike lasting for around 200 days at most mills.
