Marchand Archive

Portrait of a Man, c. 1835

Image ID: 8384

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Domesticity, Arts and Architecture, Class and Status, Early National Period, Family to 1920, Jacksonian Era, Luxury, Middle-Class Culture, Naive Art, Nineteenth Century Interiors, Success 19th century, Victorian Culture, Whites, non planters ante bellum

Region(s): United States

CA Standard(s): 8.1 - Major events preceding the founding of the nation and the development of American constitutional democracy, 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s..., 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast.

National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)

Portrait of a Woman, c. 1835

Image ID: 8383

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Domesticity, Arts and Architecture, Class and Status, Early National Period, Family to 1920, Jacksonian Era, Luxury, Middle-Class Culture, Naive Art, Nineteenth Century Furniture, Nineteenth Century Interiors, Popular recreation to 1865, Victorian Culture, Whites, non planters ante bellum, Women's image

Region(s): United States

CA Standard(s): 8.1 - Major events preceding the founding of the nation and the development of American constitutional democracy, 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s..., 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast.

National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)

Breed Shoe Factory Exteriors, 1885

Image ID: 8308

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Industrial Revolution, Advertising, African Americans, Architecture, British Empire, Business 19th century, Class Separation, Cooption of styles, Corporate Image, Early mills and factories, Environmental History, Immigrants, Individualism, Technology, Invention, Labor, Mills Factories Post Civil War, National Events, Success 20th century, Trade, Work and Workers

Region(s): United States

CA Standard(s): 8.12 - The transformation of the American economy and the changing social and political conditions…in response to the Industrial Revolution, 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s..., 11.2 - The the relationship among the rise of industrialization, large-scale rural-to-urban migration, and massive immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe

National Standard(s): The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900) , An Age of Revolutions, 1750-1914

Card Text: Breed Shoe factory exteriors, Lynn, MA, and Rochester, NH, 1885. In the late 19th century an African immigrant transformed Lynn into the shoe capital of the world. During the colonial era, Lynn was dotted with 10- by 10-foot shacks where artisan shoemakers practiced their craft. "They're producing roughly – maybe if they’re lucky - five shoes a day. Five individual shoes." But as the Industrial Revolution swept through America in the early 19th century, shoemaking in Lynn moved from small shops to factory floors. Aided by new technology, production increased – from five shoes a day to 50 pairs. Abby Battis of the Lynn Historical Society says, "Cutting the leather, shaping the leather, getting the eyeholes cut, producing the sole, producing the heel; all of that was mechanized." But one crucial step was not: the lasting. Artisans still had to hand-stretch the leather upper over a last – a wooden mold in the shape of a foot – and nail the leather to the insole. It created a bottleneck on the assembly line and was considered too intricate a task for any machine. Jan Matzeliger was born in Suriname, in South America, to a Dutch engineer father and a Surinamese enslaved mother. When he arrived in Lynn in the 1870s, he didn’t know much English, but he did know how to make shoes. He’d spent countless hours watching lasters work, and had a notion that he could mechanize their movements. Battis says that Matzeliger had a preternatural talent for mechanics, but no formal training. "English isn’t his first language so he’s buying English books, and he’s not just learning how to build machines and the science and mechanics of machines, but he’s also learning English." Matzeliger toiled and tinkered endlessly in his small, bare, cold, dark room. Studying. Sketching. Building model after model. "He didn’t take care of himself, didn’t eat well, was just completely obsessed with getting this machine done." After five painstaking years, his obsession paid off. In 1883, Matzeliger finally obtained a patent for his lasting machine. "Here he is up against a language barrier, a literacy barrier and being an African American at the end of an abolitionist movement," said Battis. "If he had actually thought about creating this lasting machine, maybe 20 to 25 years earlier, he never would have been able to take a patent out on his own. He’d have to have a white man actually apply for it." In 1885, his invention was unveiled and demonstrated. Not only did it work, it changed everything. Factory production jumped from 50 pairs a day to 750 pairs a day. The cost of a pair of shoes made in Lynn dropped by half. Within a few years, Lynn was the undisputed shoe capital of the world with 234 factories churning out more than a million pairs of shoes a day. But Matzeliger would never fully enjoy the spoils of his success. By the end of the decade he was dead of tuberculosis – an all too common end for shoe factory workers of the era. He was just 36. Shoe production in Lynn would wane through the 20th century. The Great Depression hit the industry hard, and the last remaining shoe factory in the city burned down in 1981. Today, nearly all shoes sold in the US are made overseas, but Matzeliger’s stamp on Lynn is indelible. Scores of residents today live in former shoe factories. Even Lynn Common is shaped like the sole of a shoe. "From 1623-1981 is when shoe manufacturing is taking place in the city so that's a pretty strong history," Battis said. It's thanks, in large part, to Jan Matzeliger, whose lasting machine transformed Lynn into the shoe capital of the world 130 years ago.

Mill Building of Five Floors, 1852

Image ID: 8276

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Industrial Revolution, Agrarian Reform, Arts and Architecture, Business 19th century, Class Structure, Corporate Image, Early mills and factories, Emerging industrial city, Environmental History, Expansion, Invention, Labor, Lowell, Market Economy, Mills Factories Post Civil War, National Events, Success 19th century, Sweatshops, Technology, Trade, Urbanization, Women in labor movement, Women's work

Region(s): United States

CA Standard(s): 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast. , 8.10 - The multiple causes, key events, and complex consequences of the Civil War, 8.11 - The character and lasting consequences of Reconstruction, 8.12 - The transformation of the American economy and the changing social and political conditions…in response to the Industrial Revolution, 8.5 - U.S. foreign policy in the early Republic

National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877) , The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900)

Card Text: Mill building, 1852. In the late 1700s, cotton goods originally imported from India became fashionable in North America because of their low cost and good looks. Due to its advances in cotton manufacturing, Great Britain was quickly becoming the world leader in manufacturing cotton goods. American consumers liked them and American merchants looked for ways of producing them. The first American mill to complete with the British was Slater's Mill, a spinning mill built in 1793 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island by Samuel Slater, an expatriate Englishman with knowledge of mills. In 1807, President Thomas Jefferson imposed an embargo on British goods in retaliation for British kidnapping of American sailors on the high seas and forcing them to sail British ships. The embargo was unpopular in the US because the country was reliant on British manufactures, but it spurred the growth of US industries. The first US cotton mills did not use power looms widely before 1815. In the 1840s and '50s, workers’ houses sprang up adjacent to the mills, and these mill hamlets grew into villages that by 1900 merged into urban communities. Rapid residential development followed. The mill owners in Baltimore, MD, for example, had several advantages: 1) their mills were close to the Southern cotton fields, and Marylanders were considered Southerners 2) the mills were located next to a busy trading and shipbuilding port and its market for their sail cloth 3) the new Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) Railroad ran through the coal fields of West Virginia, bringing cheap coal right to the harbor 4) and rail service to Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York was inexpensive, increasing the sales of their goods. Cotton production boomed from 1850 to 1920. Initially, local cotton mills supplied sails for the Tea Clipper ships that raced across the Pacific and around Cape Horn to bring back the freshest tea from China. As clipper ships were replaced by steamships in the 1870s, the cotton mills began to make clothing, particularly uniforms, and other military gear such as tents and backpacks for the Spanish-American War and World War I.

Railroad Suspension Bridge Near Niagara Falls, NY, 1856

Image ID: 8211

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Transportation, African Americans, Arts and Architecture, Brooklyn Bridge, Business 19th century, Canada, Developing Nations, Emerging industrial city, Environmental History, Free Blacks, Industrial Revolution, Invention, Market Economy, Middle-Class Culture, Nationhood, Nineteenth Century Slavery, Railroad and steamboat, Railroads, Slaves Violence Resistance, Success 19th century, Symbols, US Nationalism, Niagara

Region(s): Canada, United States

CA Standard(s): 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast. , 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 8.5 - U.S. foreign policy in the early Republic, 8.9 - The early and steady attempts to abolish slavery and to realize the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.

National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877) , The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900)

Card Text: Unidentified American artist, "The Railroad Suspension Bridge Near Niagara Falls," NY, 1856 or later. A train crosses the top of the double-deck Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge. The world's first working railway suspension bridge, it spanned the Niagara River from 1855 to 1897. It stood 825 feet (251 m) across the river, 2.5 miles (4.0 km) downstream of Niagara Falls, where it connected the Falls in Ontario to the Falls in New York. Trains used the upper deck while pedestrians and carriages used the lower. The bridge was the idea of Canadian politicians, and it was built by an American company and a Canadian one. The bridge was part of the vision of Canadian politician William Hamilton Merritt to promote trade within Canada and with the US. Bridge builders and others argued that a suspension bridge could not support the safe passage of trains. Nonetheless, the bridge companies hired Charles Ellet, Jr., who used a kite to lay a line across the 800-foot chasm and built a temporary suspension bridge in 1848. Ellet left the project after a financial dispute with the bridge companies, who hired John Augustus Roebling to complete the project. By 1854, his bridge was nearly finished, and the lower deck was opened for pedestrian and carriage travel. On March 18, 1855, a fully-laden passenger train officially opened the completed bridge. The Suspension Bridge provided a border crossing between Canada and the US, and it played a significant role in the histories of the Niagara region and the two countries. Three railway lines crossed the bridge, connecting cities on the border. The Great Western Railway, New York Central, and New York and Erie Railroad differed in track gauge, so the bridge used a triple gauge system to conserve space, overlapping two tracks and using a rail of each to form the third track. The railroads brought a large influx of trade and tourists to the Niagara Falls region. Before the American Civil War, the Underground Railroad helped enslaved workers escape across the Suspension Bridge to freedom in Canada. After the war, the bridge inspired Americans to rebuild - and industrialize - their nation. The bridge's success proved that a railway suspension bridge could be safe and operational. When its wooden structures began to decay, they were replaced with stronger steel and iron versions by 1886. Heavier trains required it be replaced by the "Steel Arch Bridge," later renamed the "Whirlpool Rapids Bridge," in 1897. The bridge shook whenever a train trundled over it, and although safe, its trembling made some passengers uncomfortable. Writer Mark Twain noted, "You drive over to Suspension Bridge and divide your misery between the chances of smashing down two hundred feet into the river below, and the chances of having a railway-train overhead smashing down onto you. Either possibility is discomforting taken by itself, but, mixed together, they amount in the aggregate to positive unhappiness." Yet thousands of people crossed the bridge safely every day. American engineers regard the Suspension Bridge as a major achievement of efficiency. In a fledgling country with limited material and financial resources, the engineers had to make do with available assets. Although the Suspension Bridge proved that the system could safely carry trains, no more suspension railway bridges were built. A beautiful engineering marvel, the bridge lured many visitors to the Falls. Travelers crossing the bridge could enjoy a view of the Falls, enhanced by the sensation of standing 250 feet in the air. Daredevils such as Maria Spelterini, the only woman known to cross the Niagara gorge on a tightrope, performed their stunts for crowds on the shore and the bridge. On June 30, 1859, Charles Blondin become the first man to cross the chasm on a tightrope. In mid-crossing, Blondin sat down on the rope and lowered a line to retrieve a drink from the deck of a boat below. In each of his later tightrope acts, he performed a different stunt, once cooking and eating an omelette in mid-crossing; another time he carried his manager Harry Colcord on his back. While giving Colcord the piggyback ride, Blondin stopped five times on the tightrope to rest and recover his strength; each time Colcord gingerly got off Blondin's back and stood on the tightrope, climbing back on after the acrobat had enough rest. Blondin's success inspired other death-defying acrobats, such as William Leonard Hunt ("The Great Farini"), Samuel Dixon, Clifford Calverly, and Spelterini, to emulate and try to surpass his acts at the same spot. The Signorina once crossed while blindfolded and a second time with her hands and legs in manacles. Another group of Americans made their own risky crossings over the Niagara Gorge as they fled the US: Enslaved African-Americans sought freedom by escaping to Canada, which declared the liberation of any slave who entered it. The bridge was part of the Underground Railroad, a network of routes designed to smuggle the enslaved to freedom in Canada. Before the American Civil War, fleeing slaves had only four main routes into Canada, of which one was crossing the Niagara River. They had help from several quarters. The state of New York generally favored granting freedom to enslaved people, and this attitude emboldened free African-American workers in Niagara, who frequently helped enslaved people flee to Canada. Before the Suspension Bridge was completed, fugitives either crossed the raging river on a boat or risked their lives by swimming at calmer points of the river. The Suspension Bridge made escape across the river easier and safer, although there was still risk. To avoid being caught and sent back to their owners, enslaved people had to sneak across on foot or hide aboard trains and oxcarts. Antislavery activist Harriet Tubman guided fugitives at night and bribed customs officials to turn a blind eye to their escape. As a result, many enslaved Americans crossed the Suspension Bridge to freedom before the United States was engulfed in civil war. After the Civil War, national pride rose as Americans lauded the bridge. The completion of the bridge that had been deemed impossible by the Western world gave Americans, who had lesser technical accomplishments than Europeans at that time, a great trophy. The Suspension Bridge became an American symbol of braving the toughest challenges and doing the impossible, pushing their drive for industrialization. Oil on canvas, 79.06 x 102.55 cm (31-1/8 x 40-3/8".)

Humphrey, Miss Muffet's Birthday Party, NY, 1894

Image ID: 8387

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Domesticity, Arts and Architecture, Children, Chromes, Class and Status, Cooption of styles, Dolls, Games 19th century, Gilded Age, Luxury, Middle-Class Culture, Nationhood, Nineteenth Century Children, Nineteenth Century Furniture, Nineteenth Century Interiors, Overcivilization, Popular recreation 1870-1920, Pro feminist and suffrage, Recreation - upper class, Upper Class since 1865, Victorian Culture, Women's misc.

Region(s): United States

CA Standard(s): 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast. , 8.12 - The transformation of the American economy and the changing social and political conditions…in response to the Industrial Revolution, 11.2 - The the relationship among the rise of industrialization, large-scale rural-to-urban migration, and massive immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe

National Standard(s): The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900) , The Emergence of Modern America (1890-1930), An Age of Revolutions, 1750-1914

Great Falls Manufacturing Company, Somersworth, NH, c. 1840

Image ID: 8323

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Lowell, Architecture, Business 19th century, Early mills and factories, Early National Period, Emerging industrial city, Environmental History, Industrial Revolution, Invention, Labor, National Events, Success 19th century, Sweatshops, Technology, Urbanization, Work and Workers

Region(s): United States

CA Standard(s): 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast. , 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s..., 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation

National Standard(s): Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s) , Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)

Merrimack Manufacturing Co., Lowell, MA, c.1850

Image ID: 8329

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Lowell, Antebellum Reform, Arts and Architecture, Business 19th century, Child labor, Class Structure, Corporate Image, Early mills and factories, Early National Period, Environmental History, Factory as symbol, Family to 1920, Gender-Bending, Industrial Revolution, Invention, Labor, Labor Organizations and Leaders, Market Economy, National Events, Nineteenth Century Children, Parents, Children, Families, Strikes and Violence, Sweatshops, Technology, Urbanization, Women in labor movement, Women's organizations, Women's work, Working Conditions

Region(s): United States

CA Standard(s): 8.10 - The multiple causes, key events, and complex consequences of the Civil War, 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast.

National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)

Card Text: The Plant of the Merrimack Manufacturing Co., Lowell, MA, 1850, detail. The Merrimack Manufacturing Company (also known as Merrimack Mills) was the first major textile factory to open in Lowell, Massachusetts, beginning operations in 1823. After the death of Francis Cabot Lowell of the Boston Manufacturing Co., his "Boston Associates" began planning a larger operation in East Chelmsford, MA, on the Merrimack River. The Merrimack Manufacturing Co. was modeled after the second Boston Manufacturing Co. mill and built concurrently with the necessary canals, machine shop, dyehouse, and boardinghouses for the workers. The company employed the "Lowell System." Initially capitalized with $600,000, its typical product was calico cloth. Located at the foot of the Merrimack Canal, the original mills received the power of the full 32-foot drop of the river. The Merrimack Co. was the parent company of the later Lowell firms, although they were technically competitors. The Merrimack Co. became very powerful politically in Lowell. However, as US textile production shifted away from New England, the company's fortunes reversed. It survived the Great Depression of the 1930s due to military contracts and awards that revived the surrounding economy, and it was among the last of Lowell's textile giants to close. Shortly after it ceased operations in the late 1950s, nearly the entire complex was demolished for urban renewal in 1960. A few years later, many of the boardinghouses were destroyed as well. Today, the site is occupied by new arterial roads, parking lots, low-rise office buildings, a high-rise housing tower, and the newer buildings of Lowell High School. "The Voice of industry" appeared during a period of unprecedented, explosive growth in the textile industry. It was the longest-running labor newspaper published during the US Industrial Revolution, and one of the most widely read of the many worker-run journals of the period. It started publication in 1845 in Fitchburg, Mass., under the auspices of the New England Workingmen’s Association. Written and published by the workers themselves, the "Voice" was concerned with the dramatic social changes taking place as corporations began to control economic life. New, large-scale machinery had come to dominate the production of cloth by 1840, and it was being rapidly developed in lockstep with equally new ways of organizing workers for mass production. Together, these mutually reinforcing technological and social changes produced staggering increases: From 1840 to 1860, the number of spindles in use rose from two million to over five million; bales of cotton from 300,000 to nearly a million; and the number of workers from 72,000 to nearly 122,000. This growth translated directly into large profits for the textile corporations. Between 1846 and 1850 the dividends of the “Boston Capitalists,” the group of textile companies that founded Lowell, averaged 14% per year. Most corporations recorded similarly high profits during this period, but workers saw none of these gains. In fact, most workers saw their positions decline sharply during this period as the corporations employed fewer workers and made them tend more machines at faster speeds for reduced wages. Not surprisingly, this trend created considerable discontent. Writing anonymously in the "Voice" as “one of the vast army of sufferers,” an operative protested that while workers now tended “three or four looms, where they used to tend but two” and produced twice as much cloth, “the pay is not increased to them, while the increase to the owners is very great. Is this just?” Nor was the increased danger to workers considered. In most cases, workers' total earnings stayed the same during this period, and wage cuts took the form of reductions in “piece rates," the amount paid for each piece a worker produced. At this lower rate, their total earnings were maintained by producing more output; which, for the most part, was accomplished by pushing operatives to work harder. Workers were made to tend more machines (a practice referred to as the “stretch-out") at faster speeds (referred to as the “speedup"); they were, in other words, being made to perform more work for less money. Another worker, writing in 1845, observed that while the profits of 11 Lowell mills had doubled from the year before, the workers were being paid 12.5% less. “This is the natural result of the state of things in New England," she concluded, “the more wealth becomes concentrated in a few hands, and the poorer the great mass becomes.” In the previous decade, the power of the corporations had been limited, as disillusioned workers could leave the factories and return to their nearby rural homes. By the early 1840s, however, many New England farms had been crushed by a severe economic depression, leaving workers with no alternative to harsh factory life. For the first time, a permanent “factory population” arose in Lowell. Measures aimed at increasing worker "discipline" became suddenly more effective. Corporations colluded to increase the workweek and the number of hours in the workday. They maintained "blacklists" that prevented discharged workers - fired, in many cases, for trivial reasons - from finding employment at other mills. A “premium system” was adopted in which supervisors were paid bonuses for pushing operatives to produce more. As a result, by the mid-1840s, workers were spending 12- to 14-hour days each day in factories that were often overheated and poorly ventilated, doing dreary, exhausting work. While they often wrote about being treated by mill owners as “living machines,” the reality was much worse - unlike their inanimate counterparts, workers could be forced to produce more, by way of pressure and intimidation. While workers bitterly condemned this abuse of power, they were even more alarmed by another, overarching feature of the new economic order: The disconnect between the liberating potential of "labor-saving" machinery, and the way these inventions were used instead to increase output. “With such gigantically increased means of production,” asked one reformer, “would it not be supposed that the Laboring Classes would be rendered more comfortable?…Certainly, but directly the reverse is the case.” Machinery, workers argued, should be developed and applied with the aim of freeing people from undesirable work, allowing them more time to cultivate and develop their talents. Instead, they watched with dismay as their work increased, and was fragmented into narrow, routine tasks, which left them physically and mentally debased. “Compared with their employers,” wrote a worker in the Voice, “[workers] are as a class sinking day by day into a still deeper degradation.” Another observed that there was now “machinery enough in New England to do the work of five times its present population performed in the old way,” but that, “the consequence is we are nearer starvation.” These workers were also criticizing the way costs and benefits were understood and tallied in the new, profit-driven, economic system. For the factory owner, the definition of “cost" was restricted to monetary expenses, and “benefit" was defined narrowly to mean physical output. Any other costs associated with production - such as the mental deterioration suffered by workers from performing repetitious, mindless tasks - were considered irrelevant in this calculus of “profitable” work. While the rise of a permanent factory population increased the power of the corporations, it also allowed for a more lasting, permanent response to that power. In 1845, 12 factory operatives organized the first union of female factory workers in the US, the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association. Six months later, its membership had grown to 500. Under the guidance of the young labor leader Sarah Bagley, and with the "Voice of Industry" as its herald, the Association tirelessly campaigned to convince the public of the need for reform in the mills. It published a series of articles called “Factory Tracts,” which documented the deteriorating conditions in the mills, and provided “a true exposition of the Factory system and its effects upon the health and happiness of the operatives." The association would go on to become a leading organizing force in the Ten-Hour Movement in Lowell. From 1900 until 1946, the Merrimack Manufacturing Company ran a plant in Huntsville, Alabama, with non-union labor.

Rear Parlor, Harriet B. Stowe House, Hartford, CT, 1871

Image ID: 8385

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Domesticity, Abolition, Antebellum Reform, Arts and Architecture, Business 19th century, Civil War, Class and Status, Early National Period, Environmental History, Exhibition, Family to 1920, Luxury, Media, Middle-Class Culture, Moral lessons, National Events, Nineteenth Century Furniture, Nineteenth Century Interiors, Nineteenth Century Slavery, Propaganda, Religion, Slavery and Abolition, Social Gospel and Missions, Success 19th century, Technology, Victorian Culture, Whites, non planters ante bellum, Women

Region(s): United States

CA Standard(s): 8.9 - The early and steady attempts to abolish slavery and to realize the ideals of the Declaration of Independence., 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s..., 8.3 - The foundation of the American political system and the ways in which citizens participate in it, 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast.

National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)

Card Text: Rear parlor, Harriet B. Stowe House, Hartford, CT, 1871. Stowe's Victorian Gothic cottage is now a National Historic Landmark. When she settled into this new house on Forest Street, Stowe was a grand dame of belles lettres whose sentimental anti-slavery novel, ``Uncle Tom's Cabin,'' had influenced the course of US history. She spent the last 23 years of her long life in the cozy ``cottage'' across the lawn from the mansion of her Nook Farm neighbor, Mark Twain. In her 60s during the 1870s, Stowe was old enough to be Samuel Clemens' mother, and so established a literary figure as to be thought old-fashioned by younger readers. During her lifetime (1811-96), Stowe became a sensation, a prolific author whose most famous book made her a 19th-century superstar. ``Uncle Tom's Cabin,'' published in 1852, sold 350,000 copies in the US its first year, and that was just the beginning. Her novel about the cruelties of slavery was translated into many languages and adapted into a long-running hit play. ``Uncle Tom's Cabin'' was a marketer's dream: Spinoffs included wallpaper, toys, games, plates, statuettes and other ``Tomitudes.'' A Staffordshire figurine of Uncle Tom and Little Eva is on display in this room. Stowe made no money from this barrage of knickknacks. The Stowe House is furnished with characteristically ornate Victorian pieces, many of which belonged to her, but homier and far less ostentatious than in Twain's house. The parlor displays an elegant silver tea service, piano, paintings, and a small replica of the Venus de Milo. The tufted sofa was made by sewing buttons or stitches, typically in a diamond-shaped pattern, through a cushion or mattress. This technique is both elegant and functional, holding the stuffing in place to prevent its shifting or bunching up. The bay windows give onto a view of trees in a lush garden. Stowe was reform-minded on many frontiers, among them the domestic front. With her sister, Catharine Beecher, she co-wrote ``The American Woman's Home.'' The Stowe House kitchen has been re-created using the sisters' common-sense suggestions. Stowe was an enthusiastic gardener and an accomplished amateur painter whose works appear throughout the house. Her artistic skills are on view in her sitting room, which holds a bureau, bedside stand and a cane-seated chair she decorated. The Stowes lived comfortably. Harriet became the primary breadwinner in the family, ending their frequent financial worries with her publication of ``Uncle Tom's Cabin.'' Her husband, Calvin Stowe, was a poorly paid professor of Greek and sacred literature. The Forest Street house, built in 1871, was not the Stowes' first Hartford home. In 1864 she built Oakholm, her dream house, an eight-gabled Gothic villa at the edge of Nook Farm. But it became too expensive and burdensome to maintain, and her husband became ill, so the Stowes sold it. (Oakholm no longer stands.) In 1872, Stowe called the more modest Forest Street property a ``lovely beautiful house'' whose ``terms are quite within my means.'' Stowe's Connecticut connections ran deep. She was born in Litchfield, where her father, Lyman Beecher, was pastor of the Congregational Church. Harriet's brother, Henry Ward Beecher, also became an influential preacher. In 1824 she went to Hartford to study and then teach in her sister Catharine's school, the Hartford Female Seminary. Several years later Harriet moved to Cincinnati with her father, who was to head the Lane Theological Seminary. There she met Calvin Stowe, a widower whom she married in 1836. Her experiences in Ohio, a border state, were to have a profound influence on ``Uncle Tom's Cabin.'' The Stowes had seven children, four of whom predeceased Harriet. The family lived in Brunswick, Maine, and Andover, Mass., before settling in Hartford. The Beecher pull was strong. John Hooker and his wife, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Harriet's half-sister, lived at Nook Farm. Harriet (Hattie) and Eliza, the Stowes' unmarried, grown twin daughters, moved with their parents into the Forest Street house. The twins kept house for their mother, and in her final years Harriet remained a celebrity whose Hartford visitors included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson and William T. Sherman. In 1878, Stowe published ``Poganuc People,'' her ode to her New England childhood and the last act in a literary career that spanned 44 years and more than 30 books. Calvin died in 1886, and as Harriet aged she became senile and sometimes given to bizarre behavior. The restoration of Stowe's house (and the Mark Twain house) was largely the doing of Harriet's grandniece, Katharine Seymour Day. The current display documents Stowe's triumphant 1853 tour of Europe, the year after ``Uncle Tom's Cabin'' had awakened readers around the world to the horrors of slavery.

Parlor, Jailkeeper's Quarters, Williamsburg, VA

Image ID: 8340

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Antebellum Reform, 18th Century Furniture, 18th Century Interiors, Architecture, British Empire, Class Separation, Colonial America, Columbian Exposition, Early cities, Early Virginia, Eighteenth Century, Environmental History, Institutions and social disorder, Moral lessons, National Politics, Nineteenth Century Slavery, Politics & Government, Technology, Urban poverty, Victorian Culture, Williamsburg, Working Class Culture

Region(s): United States

CA Standard(s): 5.4 - Political, religious, social, and economic institutions that evolved in the colonial era. , 5.5 - The causes of the American Revolution, 5.7 - People and events associated with the development of the U.S. Constitution and it's significance as the foundation of the American republic, 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation

National Standard(s): Colonization and Settlement (1585-1763), Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s) , Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)

Merrimack Mill No. 6, Lowell, MA, 1868

Image ID: 8320

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Lowell, Architecture, Business 19th century, Civil Rights, Class and Status, Corporate Image, Early mills and factories, Early National Period, Emerging industrial city, Environmental History, Family to 1920, Gender-Bending, Immigrants, Industrial Revolution, Invention, Irish, Labor Organizations and Leaders, National Events, Pullman and Model Towns, Strikes and Violence, Sweatshops, Technology, Town and city planning, Urbanization, Women in labor movement, Women's work, Work and Housing, Working Conditions

Region(s): United States

CA Standard(s): 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast. , 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s..., 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation

National Standard(s): Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s) , Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)

Card Text: "Merrimack Mill No. 6," Lowell, MA, 1868. The Merrimack Manufacturing Company, also known as Merrimack Mills, was the first of the major textile manufacturing concerns to open in Lowell, Massachusetts, beginning operations in 1823. After the death of Francis Cabot Lowell of the Boston Manufacturing Co., his associates (commonly referred to as the Boston Associates) began planning a larger operation in East Chelmsford, MA, along the Merrimack River. The Merrimack Manufacturing Co. was modeled after the second Boston Manufacturing Co. mill and built concurrently with the necessary canals, machine shop, dye-house, and boardinghouses for the workers. The company used an operating system known as the Lowell System. Initially capitalized with $600,000, its typical product was calico cloth. The original mills were located at the foot of the Merrimack Canal and received the full 32' drop of the river. Closely associated with the Proprietors of Locks and Canals, and at one point merged with the company under the same agents (such as Kirk Boott), the Merrimack Co. was the parent company of the later Lowell firms - although they were technically competitors. The Merrimack Co. was very powerful in the politics of the settlement, later town, and then city, of Lowell. However, as US textile production shifted away from New England, the Merrimack Manufacturing Co.'s fortunes reversed. The company was able to survive the Great Depression due to military contracts and awards that revamped the surrounding economy, and it was among the last of Lowell's textile giants to close. It ceased operations in the late 1950s and nearly the entire complex was demolished for urban renewal in 1960. A few years later, many of the boardinghouses were destroyed as well. Today, the site is occupied by new arterial roads, parking lots, a few low-rise office buildings, a high-rise housing tower, and the newer buildings of Lowell High School. The mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, attracted the most attention for they were on a new scale, larger and more industrial than anything Americans had seen. Americans applied an English metaphor: Lowell was the "Manchester of America," a new industrial city built from scratch by a group of Boston capitalists. These men had earlier invested in the Boston Manufacturing Co., a textile mill Francis Cabot Lowell had founded in 1814 in Waltham, Massachusetts, about ten miles west of Boston. That mill was the first large-scale textile mill in America. It went beyond earlier American mills by including power-loom weaving and spinning. The Lowell mills extended the ideas experimented with at Waltham; and in their size, corporate structure, and urban setting, these large textile mills set the style for much subsequent American industrial development. A mill was, in a way, a vast machine, connected by a complicated system of shafts and belts. If it were to work properly, all the spinners and weavers and carders and dressers had to be in place when it was started and work until it was stopped. The great cost of the machines meant that the mills had to be kept running, even when the market for their product was weak. That often meant cuts in the workers' pay. And most important, the machines' steady motion insisted on a machine-like pace for the workers. The managers set the speed of the machines, and the machines set the pace of work. The mills of Lowell employed a new industrial work force; not families, as in the mills of England and southern New England, but rather young women labored there. The 1820s were hard times for the farmers of New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine. The opening of the Erie Canal was bringing in cheaper goods from the West, and the West was luring their sons off the poor New England soil. Their daughters, looking for work outside the home - some to earn money for their families, some to earn money for themselves - were attracted to Lowell. There were other reasons the mills employed women. First, women were traditionally employed in home textile work. Second, they were not expected to support families and so could be paid less. Third, in this period women were never expected to be independent, equal citizens - they could not vote, after all - and unlike male artisans, they had no independence to lose when they became factory hands. When these young women arrived at Lowell they found housing in the rows of boardinghouses that surrounded the mills. Here respectable boardinghouse keepers, paid by the Lowell corporations, ensured the "morality" of the factory experience, reporting any misconduct to the agents of the corporations. Their guidance was supplemented by a code of moral rules in the mills themselves; girls were fired for offenses ranging from "hysteria" to "insubordination" and could be blacklisted and kept from working at other mills. Most mill girls stayed in Lowell only a few years before marrying or returning to their families' farms. The mill girls of Lowell even became famous for their attainments in literature and the arts. One group published "The Lowell Offering," a literary magazine often cited as an example of the elevated moral attainments of a truly American industrial work force. Why did the proprietors of the Lowell mills spend the extra money to establish a paternalistic regime there? Some of them took seriously the warnings about the evils of factory work. Some feared that they would not be able to attract workers to do the hard labor the mills required without the amenities they offered, or feared that the mill girls' parents would not allow them to work at the mills without supervision. Some may have feared American reactions to Lowell if it adopted the harsh English factory model, widely despised in the US. Whatever the reasons, the paternalism of the Boston Associates, though widely admired, was not without its tarnish. The first strike of women factory workers in this country occurred at the Boston Manufacturing Co. in 1821, when the company cut wages. A mechanic at the mill wrote in a letter, "The girls as one revolted," and they stopped work for two days. At Lowell there were similar strikes when management cut pay or sped up the work. The mill girls appealed to American democratic ideals in their strikes, striking for "liberty" against the "oppressing hand of avarice that doth enslave us." They published labor newspapers and circulated petitions for shorter working hours. The 1820s and 1830s have been called Lowell's Golden Age. It was the time of the New England mill girls, relatively unpressured working conditions, closely supervised boardinghouses, and "The Lowell Offering." The 1840s saw the bosses "speeding up" and "stretching out" in the mills, running the machines faster and forcing each worker to tend more machines to make up for falling profits. The Yankee mill girls began to leave, replaced by Irish immigrants with no better options. The Civil War meant the end of Lowell as an industrial experiment for the owners who, thinking the war would last only months, mistakenly sold off their cotton to make quick profits. When the mills reopened after the war, the "Lowell experiment" was over: The Yankee work force was gone, replaced with immigrant workers. Lower wages and sped-up machinery indicated the owners' drive only for profit, not for a moral workplace. Drawing.

View of Lowell, Massachusetts, 1834

Image ID: 8324

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Lowell, Architecture, Business 19th century, Civil Rights, Class Structure, Early mills and factories, Early National Period, Emerging industrial city, Environmental History, Family to 1920, Gender-Bending, Immigrants, Industrial Revolution, Invention, Irish, Labor, Labor Organizations and Leaders, Moral lessons, National Events, Pullman and Model Towns, Strikes and Violence, Success 19th century, Sweatshops, Technology, Town and city planning, Urbanization, Women in labor movement, Women's work, Work and Housing, Working Conditions

Region(s): United States

CA Standard(s): 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast. , 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s..., 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation

National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)

Card Text: View of Lowell, MA, 1834. Young unmarried women worked the early mills of New England towns such as Winooski, Vermont, and Lowell, Massachusetts, as the primary labor force, chosen because they were available, knowledgeable in textile construction and, most importantly to their employers, cheap. The Industrial Revolution came to New England in the early 1800s. Previously, most manufacturing was done by artisans and craftsmen in their workshops for individual customers. Textiles were routinely made by farm wives and daughters in their homes. The early mills that did line the Winooski River, for example, sawed lumber and ground grain into flour, but these were not factories. That pattern of small-scale production shifted dramatically as the mechanization of textile production developed and changed everything. Very quickly, the original craftsmens' and artisans’ businesses were displaced by factories, which brought new modes of work: hourly wages paid for factory labor. While the most famous of these new industrial complexes in New England was Lowell, Massachusetts, many mill towns including Winooski followed the model established by the Boston Associates who created Lowell. The concept established by these new industrial entrepreneurs was twofold: to create efficiency and profit in manufacturing and to avoid the wretched conditions of factories as they existed in England. Starting in the first two decades of the 19th century, factory employers began to recruit and employ young women aged 15 to 30 to run their machines. Availability was an important factor; in New England there was a surplus of young unmarried women willing to take up the work. Despite the fact that they were not paid as much as men would have been, the wages these new employers offered were attractive and the factory towns offered a freedom and excitement that drew young women from rural farms to the developing urban centers. Why did parents allow their daughters to go, sometimes many miles away, to take up these jobs? For some parents, it was a way to find relief from the cost of feeding large families. Many young women sent part of their wages home to help their family members left at home. For other parents, the benefits of education, cultural improvement, and economic mobility for their daughters was enticing. Moreover, parents were assured by mill owners that their daughters would be cared for, housed, and supervised appropriately. Employers required that mill girls be lodged in company-owned and -operated boarding houses, supervised throughout the day by their employers and then at night by the “housemothers” who would make sure they went to work, attended church services, and engaged in worthy reading and intellectual pursuits. “The most efficient guards were adopted in establishing boardinghouses, at the cost of the Company, under the charge of respectable women,” noted a Massachusetts mill owner. “Under these circumstances, the daughters of respectable farmers were readily induced to come to these mills for a temporary period.” The idea was that the girls would work in the mills until they married, and the money they earned would presumably expand their “going to housekeeping” goods, thereby improving their married lives. In this era of industrial paternalism, the supervised boardinghouses served to ease parents’ minds and guide the new “factory operatives” in the shift from rural, seasonal work habits to industrial timeclocks. For a while, the Lowell model worked well. Young women streamed into factory towns and took up the work. Boardinghouses provided safe and affordable accommodations a short walk from the factories. The mill whistles marked the times for getting out of bed, being at the work station, and going home to rest. The work week was five and a half days long, with 12- to 14-hour work days. The cloth produced by these young women began to rival that of England’s mills in quality as well as in quantity, and by mid-century, American manufacturers began to challenge English dominance in textile production. The wealth gained from the sales of their manufactured cloth encouraged mill owners to experiment with methods to improve production while cutting costs. They tinkered with the speed of machines and began to assign more machines to individual operators. It was these “speed-ups” and “stretch-outs” that began to spark a response the mill owners had not anticipated: a mounting resistance to their demands. When the glutted market caused a retrenchment in the sales of cloth, employers cut wages, further galvanizing female operatives to protest their working conditions. In anger, the factory owners tried to throw out the most outspoken of these protestors. Women who protested were labeled “unfeminine” and “ungrateful” for the benefits that the factory work had given them. Together at night in their boarding houses, mill girls discussed their unfair treatment and undeserved criticism. Some argued for more overt action. One of the mill girls' first major strikes took place in Lowell in October, 1836. When the mill owners announced a wage cut and a withdrawal of a subsidy for their room and board, the workers decided to strike. Without their primary workers in place, the mills were forced to shut down. The striking workers marched to Chapel Hill and, according to operative Harriet Robinson, “listened to incendiary speeches.” Although the strike failed to force the mill owners to retract their wage cuts, the mill girls were not discouraged and continued their resistance to the exploitation by their bosses. As Yankee mill girls began to make more demands, employers began to look elsewhere for more pliable workers. They found cheaper workers in the waves of Irish and French Canadian immigrants who began to arrive in large numbers between 1840 and 1860. The older model of an industrial utopia receded and the new workers faced even less sympathy from factory managers. Factory conditions deteriorated, wages fluctuated, and the decent boarding houses were now deemed unnecessary as immigrants did not have insistent parents to protect them.

Sewing Bee, Oneida Community, NY, c. 1850?

Image ID: 8337

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Antebellum Reform, Agrarian Reform, Arts and Architecture, Business 19th century, Class Structure, Domesticity, Early mills and factories, Early National Period, Environmental History, Family to 1920, Future Progress, Gender-Bending, Individualism, Technology, Invention, Labor, Masculinity, Middle-Class Culture, Moral lessons, Nature and Civilization, Nineteenth Century Children, Nineteenth Century Misc, Parents, Children, Families, Pro feminist and suffrage, Pullman and Model Towns, Religion, Social disorder and order to 1865, Socialism, Strikes and Violence, Success 19th century, Utopias, Utopias pre 1860, Whites, non planters ante bellum, Women's liberation, Women's work, Work and Housing

Region(s): United States

CA Standard(s): 8.12 - The transformation of the American economy and the changing social and political conditions…in response to the Industrial Revolution, 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast. , 8.9 - The early and steady attempts to abolish slavery and to realize the ideals of the Declaration of Independence., 11.3 - The role of religion in the founding of America and its lasting moral, social, and political impacts, and issues regarding religious liberty.

National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)

Card Text: Bee for making travelling bags, Oneida Community, NY. The Oneida Community was a religious commune that expanded into Wallingford, CT, in 1851 when a local farmer invited founder John Humphrey Noyes to establish a new community on 228 acres of his property. The Oneida Community (1848-80) was one of the most radical social experiments ever seen in the United States. A religious utopian group numbering about 250 New Englanders transplanted to upstate New York, the Community advocated common ownership of property and the sharing of all work and love. They practiced a “free love” system of marriage in which all adult men and women were regarded as heterosexual spouses to one another. This “complex marriage” is today called open marriage. They believed sex to be a divine gift, “the instrument for unselfish love and communion with God.” The Community claimed to have emancipated women from involuntary pregnancy by eliminating male climax from the sex act, and aimed to free Community women from the bondage of marriage and the tedium of household drudgery. The commune instituted a program of human breeding in order, they asserted, to elevate the condition of humankind. Noyes believed in the idea of Christian perfectionism, which did not recognize private ownership of property. The community initially began farming fruit, expanded into printing and eventually built a silver company, Oneida Silverware. When the Oneida Community in Wallingford dissolved in 1881, its remaining members returned to New York, where they founded and later sold the Oneida silverware company. It still operates today. A number of factors contributed to the decline of the Oneida Community: competition from Wallace Silversmiths, the rise of Victorian-era morals, and the death or defection of members. The deadly tornado of 1878 was another blow. It began over Community Lake, the waterspout sweeping up Daniel O’Reilly, the town’s first police chief, who was fishing on the lake. O’Reilly survived being thrown hundreds of feet onto the shore.

Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808

Image ID: 8390

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Domesticity, Ancient History, Arts and Architecture, Early National Period, Eden Imagery, Greece Ancient, Landscape, anti-urban, Mythology, Personalization, Recreation - upper class, Roman, Symbols, Technique, Victorian Culture, Women's image, Cooption of styles, Nationhood

Region(s): United States

CA Standard(s): 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 8.5 - U.S. foreign policy in the early Republic, 11.2 - The the relationship among the rise of industrialization, large-scale rural-to-urban migration, and massive immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe

National Standard(s): Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s) , Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)

Lowell, MA, Shopping District, Merrimac St, 1856

Image ID: 8336

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Lowell

Region(s):

CA Standard(s): 8.10 - The multiple causes, key events, and complex consequences of the Civil War

National Standard(s):

Card Text: Lowell shopping district, Merrimac Street, 1856. Abolitionists craving information about the anti-slavery movement often turned to newspapers. One of their main sources in Lowell was the anti-slavery Middlesex Standard, a newspaper produced in the Nesmith Block on the corner of Merrimack and John Streets. The Middlesex Standard ran from July 25, 1844 to March 13, 1845 under the editorship of John Greenleaf Whittier and Chauncey Langdon Knapp. This paper circulated only briefly but during a time when important abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass came to the city to speak against slavery. It was also a period when people in towns near Lowell were actively reporting the movements of self-emancipated persons. Whittier and Knapp made it clear that they would not report any individual who escaped slavery. They did print stories about enslaved people who successfully joined family members already in Massachusetts. In addition to publishing anti-slavery articles, newspaper staff became involved in fundraising for legal fees for abolitionists who were captured in their attempts to free enslaved people. Though the Middlesex Standard ran for less than a year, it was a vital source of information that reached many citizens of Lowell, spreading its message that “Slavery in all its forms is anti-democratic, the natural enemy of the working man.” In the early-to-mid 1800s, Lowell’s textile-based economy was wholly dependent on the institution of slavery. To meet the demand for Lowell’s cotton mills, enslaved people collectively worked about 33 million hours per year. Yet some of the people whose livelihoods depended on this enslaved labor also fought against slavery by signing petitions, forming societies, and donating hard-earned money to individuals and court cases. Fugitives from slavery also came to Lowell to start new lives as free people. It was possible for a textile factory worker to listen to anti-slavery gospels one day and earn her pay weaving cloth made from the cotton produced by enslaved workers the next. Lowell’s historic downtown today is full of sites of anti-slavery activity frequented by activists, free people, operatives, and leaders. Their fight for freedom and equity took place on factory floors, in church pews, and in old City Hall. Yet elites in Lowell and the South maintained an “unholy alliance,” mutually benefiting off the “terrible trade.” Lowell’s split history of abolitionism and support for slavery created great tension in the city. When an anti-slavery speaker came to Lowell in 1834, he drew an angry stone-throwing mob. Mill owners and workers depended on Southern cotton, and anyone who threatened the system was unwelcome. Ever since Slater's cotton mill was established in 1790 and the cotton gin invented three years later, Southern cotton and Northern textiles had had a reciprocal relationship. The North's appetite for raw cotton spurred increased cotton production and the expansion of slavery. Lowell not only bought Southern cotton, but it made "negro cloth" that was sold to plantations. For a few years, the machine shop produced cotton gins sold in the South. Senator Charles Sumner called it an " unholy union...between the cotton planters and flesh-mongers of Louisiana and Mississippi and the cotton spinners and traffickers of New England - between the lords of the lash and the lords of the loom." Dependence on slave grown cotton and moral indignation over slavery coexisted uneasily in Lowell in the years before the Civil War. Many Lowell residents were uncomfortable enough about slavery that they opposed its extension into western territories. Most, however, fearing the mounting sectional conflict, probably would have supported a compromise that accepted slavery where it already existed. But when war broke out, the Union cause and the abolitionists’ cause merged. Its "Southern connection" broken, the city lined up behind Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the Union war effort. Wood engraving.

A View of Lowell, MA: Boott's Cotton Mills, 1852

Image ID: 8314

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Lowell, Architecture, Business 19th century, Civil Rights, Civil War, Class Separation, Early mills and factories, Early National Period, Emerging industrial city, Environmental History, Family to 1920, Gender-Bending, Immigrants, Industrial Revolution, Invention, Irish, Labor, Labor Organizations and Leaders, National Events, Parents, Children, Families, Prejudice and Discrimination, Pullman and Model Towns, Strikes and Violence, Sweatshops, Technology, Town and city planning, Women in labor movement, Women's work, Work and Housing, Working Conditions

Region(s): United States

CA Standard(s): 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast. , 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s..., 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 11.2 - The the relationship among the rise of industrialization, large-scale rural-to-urban migration, and massive immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe

National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)

Card Text: "A View of Lowell," Kirk Boott's cotton mills at Lowell, MA, 1852. Workers promenade in the courtyard, imitating genteel respectability; "ladies and gentlemen" mingle on a small green with trees. In 1835, Boott Cotton Mills were chartered "for the purpose of manufacturing cotton and woolen goods," and became a part of Lowell, the first major industrial city in the US. The story of the Boott Mills, the most architecturally significant of the surviving mill complexes, parallels the city's rise, decline and rebirth. Named for Kirk Boott, an English-American born in Boston who oversaw the construction and operation of the many canals and mills of early Lowell, the Boott Mills complex was built next to the Merrimack River and Eastern Canal. Waterpower for the mill was supplied by the 8-foot-deep, 2037-foot-long canal constructed in 1835-36. In its heyday in 1893, the Boott employed more than 2,200 workers, 76% of whom were female. In weave rooms, the noise, heat, and humidity were overwhelming. Looms packed the floor and the air was filled with cotton dust; byssinosis has been an infamous disabling occupational lung disease caused by cotton dust - both then and now. In time, Northern mills faced aggressive Southern competition, outmoded physical plants, high taxes, and conflict between Lowell's workers and managers. In 1813, after examining British models, Francis Cabot Lowell successfully constructed a power loom that spurred the expansion of the city of Lowell, known then as East Chelmsford. The city was in a prime location for water-powered factories thanks to the nearby Merrimack River, and the Middlesex Canal provided easy transport of goods to and from nearby Boston. The industrialist Kirk Boott worked for the Merrimack Manufacturing Company, one of the earliest in the area. He was responsible for much of the early urban planning that shaped Lowell's industrial and residential landscape, from the deafening noise of machinery to the transformation of bales of cotton into bolts of cloth to the labor struggles waged by the women and immigrant workers of Lowell. He was concerned with the factories and dormitories that would house workers, not with the other residents of the town or the workers' well-being. He reserved the prime space along the river for the mills, with the dormitories to their rear. The shift to factory-produced textiles was one of the major processes of the Industrial Revolution, and it profoundly affected New England society. To keep costs down and obtain an easily-controlled labor force, mill owners like Boott recruited young women to work in the mills. During the 1800s, it was uncommon for women to leave the protection of their father, husband or brother. To convince their “protectors” to let them work in the factory, away from the safety of the home, and to keep them away from the dangers of the city, the mill operators built boarding houses to be run by older women of good repute. The worker-residents had to sign a contract requiring them to attend church and respect a curfew. The mill girls were expected to work hard for $1.85 to $3.00 a week, the highest wage in the country for women at the time, though lower than the wages paid to male workers. In addition to cash wages, Lowell factory workers were given educational and cultural opportunities meant to improve their prospects; women were not expected to work for long in the mills, but for only a few years before getting married - or unionizing. During the Civil War, however, a shortage of cotton and other raw materials forced many mills to shut down, and the mill girls left the area in massive waves in search of work. Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine were happy to move to the area and work in the factories for lower wages than the American women had. The Irish took the jobs and brought their children to work in the factory. With time, the working conditions in the mills deteriorated, wages decreased, and longer shifts were demanded. The owners of Boott Manufacturing Company and other mills pursued the most aggressive "labor-cheapening" policies they could devise. By making workers' tasks as simple and repetitive as possible, they exacted a psychological toll on their workers while making them easy to replace. Textile workers thus lost the ability to exert collective bargaining power. The mills' initial control over virtually all aspects of the mill girls' lives echoed in the extreme power imbalance between management and labor that endured for the lifespan of the mills. Yet despite the difficulties involved in labor organizing, women led strikes and other forms of labor resistance instrumental in securing reduced work hours, higher wages, and better working conditions throughout the history of the New England textile industry. The Boott Cotton Mills continued in operation until 1954. The mills are now part of Lowell National Historical Park, managed by the National Park Service.

Conestoga Wagon, 1820-40

Image ID: 8210

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Transportation, 18th Century Furniture, Colonial America, Developing Nations, Early National Period, Emigration and Passage, Environmental History, Expansion, Founding Myths, Frontier, Immigrants, Individualism, Technology, Invention, Labor, Market Economy, Middle-Class Culture, Nineteenth Century Furniture, Stores, Symbols, The West, Trade

Region(s): United States

CA Standard(s): 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast. , 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s..., 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation

National Standard(s): Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s) , Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)

Card Text: Conestoga wagon. Pennsylvania Germans near the Conestoga River built the first Conestoga wagons around 1750 to haul freight. By the 1810s, improved roads to Pittsburgh and Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia) stimulated trade between Philadelphia, Baltimore, and farms near the Ohio River. Wagoners driving horse-drawn Conestoga wagons carried supplies and finished goods westward on three- to four-week journeys and returned with flour, whiskey, tobacco, and other products. The Conestoga wagon’s curved shape shifted cargo toward the center and prevented goods from sliding on mountain slopes. The Conestoga wagons' peak years of use were 1820 to 1840. Railroads replaced them by the 1850s, and by the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 they were no longer built. The prairie schooner, a lightweight, flat-bottomed variant of the Conestoga, carried pioneer settlers from Missouri to the west coast. The origins of this distinctive horse-drawn freight wagon can be traced to the Conestoga River region of Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County in the mid- to late-18th century. Conestoga wagons, with their distinctive curved floors and canvas covers arched over wooden hoops, became a common sight over the next century as they carried farm products to cities and other goods from cities to rural communities, particularly in Pennsylvania and the nearby states of Maryland, Ohio and Virginia, and elsewhere in the US and Canada. The term "Conestoga wagon" is incorrect as a synonym for "covered wagon." It refers only to the heavy, broad-wheeled covered wagon first built in the Conestoga River region in the mid-18th century. The Conestoga River is a tributary of the Susquehanna River that flows through the center of Lancaster County. The word “Conestoga” probably derives from the Iroquois language, and sometimes means “people of the cabin pole.” Before the arrival of European settlers in the region, the Conestoga people–a Native American tribe also known as the Susquehanna or Susquehannock–lived along the Susquehanna River. Around 1700, the Conestoga people began trading with the English colony that would become Pennsylvania, founded by the Quaker leader William Penn. As the fur trade moved west of the region, the Conestoga people's influence declined and many moved west as well. In late 1763, in retaliation for what they deemed Native American aggression on the western frontier during Pontiac’s Rebellion, a vigilante group called the Paxton Boys brutally massacred most of the remaining Conestogas. By that time, skilled craftsmen in the Susquehanna Valley, believed to be Mennonite German settlers, had begun to build the distinctive covered wagons that would bear the Conestoga name. Designed for hauling heavy loads over rough roads, these covered wagons could carry as much as six tons of freight. Each one was handcrafted from oak and poplar wood. The floor of the Conestoga wagon curved upwards at each end, shifting cargo to the center to prevent it from moving or falling out when in motion. Gates at the end were held in place by a chain and could be dropped for loading and unloading. The white canvas cover of the Conestoga wagon protected the freight from inclement weather. It was stretched taut over a series of wooden hoops that arched over the wagon bed. The fabric could be soaked in linseed oil to make it waterproof. Each Conestoga wagon was pulled by four to six horses, ideally of a type bred in the region and known as Conestoga horses. These docile, strong horses could cover 12 to 14 miles a day. The wagon driver would not usually ride inside the vehicle but walk alongside, ride one of the rear horses, or perch on the "lazy board," a piece of wood pulled out from beneath the wagon bed in front of one of the rear wheels. Conestoga wagons did not play a role in the great westward migration to Oregon and California during the 19th century. They were too heavy to be pulled such long distances, and west-bound travelers turned instead to the sturdy covered wagons known as prairie schooners or “Western wagons.” These had flat bodies and lower sides than the Conestoga; their white canvas covers made the wagons look from the distance like sailing ships, earning them the “schooner” name.

Power Loom, 1830s

Image ID: 8327

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Lowell, Agrarian Reform, Agriculture, Business 19th century, Class Separation, Early mills and factories, Early National Period, Environmental History, Individualism, Technology, Industrial Revolution, Institutions and social disorder, Invention, National Events, National Politics, Nineteenth Century Slavery, Slavery, Working, and Living Conditions, Southern Society, Success 19th century, Trade, Upper class ante bellum, Urbanization

Region(s): United States

CA Standard(s): 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast. , 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s..., 8.10 - The multiple causes, key events, and complex consequences of the Civil War, 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 8.7 - The divergent paths of the American people in the South from 1800 to the mid-1800s , 8.9 - The early and steady attempts to abolish slavery and to realize the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.

National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)

Card Text: Power loom, 1830s. The US textile industry entered a new era in 1814 when Francis Cabot Lowell (1775 – 1817) created the first successful American power loom in Waltham, Massachusetts. Lowell copied successful designs of English power looms and improved them for use in the United States. These inventions revolutionized cloth-making technology. For the first time mass production of finished textile products was possible. Lowell and his brother-in-law Patrick Jackson incorporated their business in 1814 with one brick structure of six floors. They added a second mill in 1818 and a third in 1820. First using water to power his machines, Lowell located his factory on the Charles River at Waltham. It was the first successful power-driven textile mill in the world. The entire process of transforming raw cotton into cloth was gathered within the same building for the first time. Lowell combined the new power loom, effective mill organization, mass production, and cheap labor to make textile manufacturing a flourishing operation in the US. Soon textile mills sprang up along the rivers of New England and transformed the landscape, the economy, and society in general. Initially, daughters of local farmers performed the textile work. In later years, recently arrived immigrants became the main source of mill employees. Prior to the US Civil War (1861-65), textile manufacturing was the most important American industry. After Lowell's death in 1817, the great cotton-manufacturing city of Lowell, Massachusetts, was named in his honor. People are known to have weaved as far back as the 8th millennium BCE, during the Neolithic Period of the Stone Age. In ancient Egypt, over 6,000 years ago, cloth-making was a regular activity in providing clothing and other materials. During the Middle Ages, from about CE 400 to 1400, people wove cloth in homes on hand looms, which were hand-powered machines that interwove yarns and other fibers into fabrics. During the early 18th century, factory looms spurred an industrial revolution in England, where people began to work in factories rather than in their homes. Eventually, factories replaced the domestic or "cottage" system and became the standard locale of cloth production in industrial countries. Due to the size of the looms, the factory bosses preferred child workers as young as nine years old to adults in performing some of the operations. Their exploitation and endangerment of children in hazardous working conditions for extremely long hours was common in the early 19th century. In response, in 1835 Parliament passed the British Factory Act to limit working hours and improve factory conditions. The factory system began to advance in the late 18th century following a series of inventions that transformed the British textile industry and launched the Industrial Revolution. The "flying shuttle" was patented in 1733 by British inventor John Kay (1704-80); a lever mechanism drove the shuttle across the loom along a track, greatly increasing the speed of weaving and permitting "picking" (an operation that opens the fleece) to be done by one person. In 1745 Jacques de Vaucanson (1709–82) produced a French loom, further developed by his countryman Joseph-Marie Jacquard (1752 – 1834) to achieve intricate patterns in cloth. In 1764 Englishman James Hargreaves (1720-78) invented the "spinning jenny," producing thread from animal and plant fibers; it made available large supplies of yarn and forced the development of faster weaving techniques to keep up with increased demand. In 1769 Richard Arkwright (1732 – 92) invented the "water frame" for spinning, and in 1779 Samuel Crompton (1753 – 1827) invented the "spinning mule," a multiple-spindle spinning machine. These inventions mechanized the hand processes, producing textiles much more quickly and cheaply. As these new machines became larger and more costly, it became necessary to operate them in factories. Even greater technological advances were possible when power was applied to the loom, mechanizing the weaving of cloth. In a power loom, precise movements once done by human hands were duplicated by intricate interactions of cams, gears, levers, and springs. Because these movements required precision and intense coordination, weaving was the final step to be mechanized in the textile mills. One of the major technological breakthroughs early in the Industrial Revolution was the 1712 invention of the first practical steam engine by English inventor Thomas Newcomen (1664 - 1729). While making improvements to the Newcomen engine, the Scottish engineer and inventor James Watt (1736 - 1819) developed a series of inventions, the first patented in 1769, that made possible the modern steam engine. When textile factories became mechanized, only water power was available to operate the machinery. The factory owner was forced to locate the manufacturing facility near a water supply, sometimes in an inconvenient or isolated region far from the workers. In 1785, however, a steam engine was first installed in a cotton factory and steam began to replace water as the power supply for the new machinery. Manufacturers could then build factories closer to labor and to markets for the textiles produced. English clergyman Edmund Cartwright (1743–1823) invented the first successful power loom in 1785. His was the first that could weave wide cloth like calico in a mass manufacturing process. It allowed operations to be faster and more efficient, and a semi-skilled worker with little experience could produce the same amount of cloth as a professional hand weaver. Using water power to operate various functions, Cartwright's loom could weave automatically much more quickly than a skilled worker operating a standard loom. In 1787 Cartwright opened a textile mill and two years later began using steam engines manufactured by James Watt and Matthew Boulton to drive his looms. Cartwright's steam-powered machines made the textile manufacturing process much more efficient and popular—and therefore profitable—to factory owners. The earlier method powered by the water wheel nearly disappeared as the steam engine became the preferred power supply. The power loom became both quicker and more precise. All operations that had been performed previously by the weaver's hands and feet could now be operated mechanically. In 1802 English cotton manufacturer William Horrocks of Stockport patented an improved power loom. It featured a better way to wind the woven cloth onto a rear beam of the loom. During the next 20 years further improvements appeared. Early in the 19th century, many English factory owners began to use Cartwright's power loom with Horrocks' improvements. By 1818 in the Manchester area, 14 factories were running with a total of 2,000 power looms. Three years later the number of northern English factories had increased to 32 mills with 5,732 power looms in use. By 1850 over 250,000 cotton power looms were in use in Britain, and nearly 177,000 were in Lancashire County surrounding Manchester. Former British textile apprentice Samuel Slater (1768 – 1835) introduced the Arkwright method of spinning into the United States in 1790 when he started a factory in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Cotton manufacture did not grow rapidly in the American South until after 1793 when Massachusetts teacher Eli Whitney(1765 – 1825), then living in Georgia, invented a machine that he called the "cotton gin." It is likely that Revolutionary General Nathanael Greene's widow Catherine (1755 – 1814) gave him the basic idea. This new machine could clean at least 300 pounds of cotton a day, a remarkable improvement on the former rate of about one pound per day by hand. Whitney's cotton gin solved the problem of mass production and cotton manufacture; ten years after the machine had gone into operation, the US was exporting over 100,000 bags of cotton, or more than 40,000,000 pounds, with enormous increases every year. Up to that time and much later, the cotton yarn spun in US mills was mostly woven into cloth by hand in family homes. The invention of the cotton gin and the power loom led to the rise of the cotton industry as mechanized textile mills sprang up mostly in the Northeast and then in the South. Whitney had believed the cotton gin would reduce the demand for enslaved workers and hasten the end of Southern slavery. On the contrary, the invention of the cotton gin made slavery more profitable and thus strengthened it as an institution. Because of the cotton gin, enslaved people labored on ever-larger plantations where work was more regimented and relentless. As large plantations spread into the Southwest, the price of enslaved labor and land inhibited the growth of cities and industries, retarding the modernization of the region. Drawing.

Public Hospital and Dewitt Wallace Gallery, Williamsburg, VA

Image ID: 8338

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Antebellum Reform, Civil Rights, Class and Status, Early National Period, Institutions and social disorder, Moral lessons, National Events, Nineteenth and Twentieth Century, Nineteenth Century Slavery, Prejudice and Discrimination, Race, Reform, Slavery, Working, and Living Conditions, Social disorder and order to 1865, Success 19th century, Williamsburg

Region(s): United States

CA Standard(s): 8.1 - Major events preceding the founding of the nation and the development of American constitutional democracy, 11.10 - The development of federal civil rights and voting rights

National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)

Card Text: Public hospital and Dewitt Wallace Gallery, Williamsburg, VA. Eastern State Hospital was the first public facility in the United States constructed solely for the care and treatment of the mentally ill. In 1770, Colonial legislators met in Williamsburg, the capital of the Virginia colony, and passed a bill authorizing the construction of a hospital for this purpose. The building was erected on an eight-acre site near the College of William and Mary, and the first patients were admitted on October 12, 1773. The Hospital provided treatment during the turbulent crises of both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. In 1841 the Hospital, called Eastern Lunatic Asylum and housing 125 “inmates,” came under the supervision of Dr. John Galt, a brilliant physician who brought "Moral Management" treatment to the mentally ill. As Dr. Galt put it, three successive revolutions in psychiatry occurred at the Hospital. The “First Revolution” was the Hospital’s founding as a publicly-supported facility exclusively for the care of the mentally ill. The “Second Revolution” was the introduction of Moral Management therapy. This taught, as Dr. Galt said, that the mentally ill “differ from us in degree, but not in kind” and are entitled to human dignity. Dr. Galt introduced therapeutic activities and talk therapy. He was probably the only asylum superintendent at the time to advocate that the psychiatric hospital undertake in-house research, and he claimed to treat African-American patients equally with whites. Dr. Galt rarely used restraint, physical control of the patients, and sought a calming medication to replace restraint. He dispensed opium liberally to patients in a foreshadowing of our 20th century neuroleptics (antipsychotic medications that block dopamine and sometimes serotonin receptors in the brain) to reduce symptoms of psychosis, the loss of contact with reality. The “Third Revolution" in psychiatry became clear in 1857, when Dr. Galt was the first to advocate de-institutionalization and community-based mental health care. He wrote, “A large number of insane, instead of rusting out their lives in the confines of some vast asylum, should be placed… in the neighboring community….Were any other class of persons than the insane collected together in such large numbers as is the case in some asylums,... the greatest disorder would be likely to ensue.” Dr. Galt’s was a lone voice, over a century ahead of its time. There was no support from the Hospital’s Court of Directors, which three times prevented his accomplishing these plans. His disappointment and consequent depression probably contributed to his suicide five years later. Most Americans in the 19th century lacked civil rights. African-Americans were enslaved, women and children oppressed, and the mentally ill tremendously stigmatized and punished. The servants at Eastern State Hospital around 1850 were actually slaves owned by the hospital; as many as 45 enslaved at the asylum did much of the work. Dr. Galt trained them, as well as white “officers” (nursing aides, now called "care workers"), to provide talk therapy for the patients. Eastern State had been an integrated hospital since its beginning in 1773, and in 1846 Dr. Galt successfully submitted a bill to admit slaves as patients. Dr. Galt claimed to treat patients equally “without regard to race,” although he published no records of the races of his patients. The mentally ill had been chained and suffered other forms of long-term restraint at Eastern Lunatic Asylum until the late 1830s, when Moral Management thinking introduced the ideals of human dignity and least restraint. After Dr. Galt arrived in 1841, he used no restraints at all in some years. Patients who escaped were sometimes cruelly treated by the surrounding community. In 1843 Dr. Galt received a bill for the castration of an Eastern State patient captured near Lynchburg, Virginia. Dr. Galt’s reaction is not known, but he did not send payment. The Civil War devastated Eastern State, destroying the advanced therapeutic community Dr. Galt had built. The Hospital found itself on one side, then another, of the battle lines, and the war disrupted lives. The Hospital was finally captured by Union troops on May 6, 1862, and Dr. Galt died soon after, on May 17 or 18. He had probably suffered from depression for many years, and either accidentally or purposely overdosed on laudanum, which he liberally dispensed to his patients as a neuroleptic substitute. By the mid-1930s, Eastern State Hospital had expanded significantly from its early beginnings. Because of the embellishment of Colonial Williamsburg by the Rockefeller family, the Hospital was moved about three miles from its downtown site to more spacious surroundings at Dunbar Farms. This move was accomplished gradually and completed in 1970. Home to the world's largest collection of Southern furniture and a large collections of British ceramics, the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum displays useful and beautiful objects. Its exhibitions illuminate life in Virginia and America before, during, and after the Revolution.

Svinin, Travel by Stagecoach Near Trenton, New Jersey, 1811-c.1813

Image ID: 8215

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Transportation, African Americans, Arts and Architecture, Business 19th century, Early National Period, Emerging industrial city, Free Blacks, Invention, Labor, Naive Art, Nationhood, Technology, Victorian Culture, Work and Workers

Region(s): United States

CA Standard(s): 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast.

National Standard(s): Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s) , Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)

Card Text: Pavel Svinin (Russian, 1787/88–1839), "Travel by Stagecoach Near Trenton, New Jersey," 1811-c.1813. A white male passenger in the coach "Diligence" lunges for his dropped top hat as a fellow passenger alerts the African American driver to the loss. In the second seat, another passenger is losing his newspaper to the breeze as his female seatmate watches. In the back seat, a young mother wearing a flowing red shawl holds her baby as the young father looks on with concern. Meanwhile, the carriage driver raises his whip above his team of four white horses as they walk down a steep hill above a winding river. A "diligence" was a large, four-wheeled, closed French stagecoach used for long journeys. It was also used in England and was popular in both countries in the 18th and 19th centuries. Some diligences held up to 16 people and were divided into two or three compartments. The driver rode on a seat just above the front wheels. Progress has made most American colonial and revolutionary towns unrecognizable. The tavern, where the gay gentlemen in periwigs and knickerbockers once gossiped with the stage driver and the post rider, has gradually given way to the modern hotel with conveniences formerly undreamt of. The village blacksmith shop is a memory, and in its place stands the gaudily-painted gasoline station with garage and repair shop in the rear. Old homes, with their large rooms and open fireplaces, are a rarity. The plain meeting house or church, where those before us worshipped on rough-hewn benches and listened attentively to long discourses on the weaknesses of the flesh, has been entirely renovated. The grist mill crumbled away years after its pad wheel ceased to turn. The placid mill pond disappeared with the removal of the dam, and the waters of the once pretty stream that fed it are murky with industrial waste. Trenton is one of these transformed communities. In colonial and revolutionary days it was a center of life and trade, the main stop on the stage line between New York and Philadelphia. The leading figures of those times passed through its streets, and in the history of the nation, Trenton has been an important city. It was the scene of two brilliant Revolutionary battles of George Washington’s winter campaign of 1776-77. The Continental Congress met in the town in postwar days, and for a time it was favored for the permanent national capital. It was selected as the site for the State Capital, and during yellow fever epidemics in Philadelphia, the seat of government, it served twice in that capacity. Vestiges of these days still linger. The narrow, crooked streets, landmarks, church graveyards and old buildings hiding their identity behind modern construction are reminders of earlier life. These sites have stories to tell, and some are of national interest. Col. Rall's Christmas party was held at a corner in the town center. At another corner the early governing body of the land met, the State Legislature held sessions, and General and Martha Washington, General Lafayette and other eminent persons were entertained. Nearby, the first American railroad charter was granted; noted trials were held; Prince Lucien Murat, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, pawned the diamond bracelet of Hortense, Queen of Holland; Louis Kossuth, the famous Hungarian patriot, and President Franklin Pierce were dined; Col. Rall had his headquarters; President John Adams was entertained; and the famous Goodyear vs. Day rubber case was tried. These are but a few of the many highlights of Trenton’s rapidly-changing sites. Watercolor, gouache, and pen and ink on off-white wove paper. 6-7/8 x 9-13/16". (17.5 x 24.9 cm).

Region

Collection

Topic

California Standard

Portrait of a Man, c. 1835

Portrait of a Woman, c. 1835

Breed Shoe Factory Exteriors, 1885

Mill Building of Five Floors, 1852

Railroad Suspension Bridge Near Niagara Falls, NY, 1856

Humphrey, Miss Muffet's Birthday Party, NY, 1894

Great Falls Manufacturing Company, Somersworth, NH, c. 1840

Merrimack Manufacturing Co., Lowell, MA, c.1850

Rear Parlor, Harriet B. Stowe House, Hartford, CT, 1871

Parlor, Jailkeeper's Quarters, Williamsburg, VA

Merrimack Mill No. 6, Lowell, MA, 1868

View of Lowell, Massachusetts, 1834

Sewing Bee, Oneida Community, NY, c. 1850?

Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808

Lowell, MA, Shopping District, Merrimac St, 1856

A View of Lowell, MA: Boott's Cotton Mills, 1852

Conestoga Wagon, 1820-40

Power Loom, 1830s

Public Hospital and Dewitt Wallace Gallery, Williamsburg, VA

Svinin, Travel by Stagecoach Near Trenton, New Jersey, 1811-c.1813

Portrait of a Man, c. 1835

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Domesticity, Arts and Architecture, Class and Status, Early National Period, Family to 1920, Jacksonian Era, Luxury, Middle-Class Culture, Naive Art, Nineteenth Century Interiors, Success 19th century, Victorian Culture, Whites, non planters ante bellum

Region(s): United States

National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)

Citation: Copyright Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 600 Main St, Hartford, CT 06103. Object ID: 1926.284. The Wallace Nutting Collection, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan. https://5058.sydneyplus.com/argus/final/Portal/Public.aspx?lang=en-US. All rights reserved. Feb 25, 2023.

Portrait of a Woman, c. 1835

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Region(s): United States

National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)

Citation: Copyright Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 600 Main St, Hartford, CT 06103. Object ID: 1926.285. The Wallace Nutting Collection, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan. https://5058.sydneyplus.com/argus/final/Portal/Public.aspx?lang=en-US. All rights reserved. Feb 25, 2023.

Breed Shoe Factory Exteriors, 1885

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Region(s): United States

National Standard(s): The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900) , An Age of Revolutions, 1750-1914

Mill Building of Five Floors, 1852

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Region(s): United States

National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877) , The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900)

Railroad Suspension Bridge Near Niagara Falls, NY, 1856

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Region(s): Canada, United States

National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877) , The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900)

Citation: Image and text: Copyright Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115-5523. Gift of Maxim Karolik for the M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Paintings, 1815–1865, 1962. Acc. No: 62.259. https://collections.mfa.org/objects/33717. All rights reserved. June 2, 2022.

Humphrey, Miss Muffet's Birthday Party, NY, 1894

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Region(s): United States

National Standard(s): The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900) , The Emergence of Modern America (1890-1930), An Age of Revolutions, 1750-1914

Great Falls Manufacturing Company, Somersworth, NH, c. 1840

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Region(s): United States

National Standard(s): Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s) , Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)

Merrimack Manufacturing Co., Lowell, MA, c.1850

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Region(s): United States

CA Standard(s): 8.10 - The multiple causes, key events, and complex consequences of the Civil War, 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast.

National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)

Rear Parlor, Harriet B. Stowe House, Hartford, CT, 1871

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Region(s): United States

National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)

Parlor, Jailkeeper's Quarters, Williamsburg, VA

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Region(s): United States

National Standard(s): Colonization and Settlement (1585-1763), Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s) , Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)

Merrimack Mill No. 6, Lowell, MA, 1868

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Region(s): United States

National Standard(s): Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s) , Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)

View of Lowell, Massachusetts, 1834

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Region(s): United States

National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)

Sewing Bee, Oneida Community, NY, c. 1850?

Collection: Karen Halttunen

Region(s): United States