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Reply-To: H-Net DISCUSSION LIST FOR LOCAL AND STATE HISTORY
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From: "Thomas M. Costa" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: REVIEW: Historical Archaeology in Lowell, MA
To: Multiple recipients of list H-LOCAL <[log in to unmask]>
Thanks to Richard Jensen for passing on this review of interest
to H-Local subscribers. It was originally posted on H-PCAACA,
the list of the Popular Culture and American Culture Studies
Association.
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 1997 20:49:38 -0600 (CST)
Subject: REVIEW: Historical Archaeology at Lowell, MA
From: "Peter Rollins, H-PCAACA" <[log in to unmask]>
This review is copyrighted (c) 1997 by H-Net and the
Popular Culture and the American Culture Associations.
It may be reproduced electronically for educational or
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_____________________________________________________________________
Stephen A. Mrozowski, Grace H. Ziesing, and Mary C. Beaudry, _Living on
the Boott: Historical Archaeology at the Boott Mills Boardinghouses, Lowell,
Massachusetts._ Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996. $40.00
cloth, 12.95 paper.
This case study in historical archaeology is designed to provide an
introduction to the field by documenting domestic life in the company owned
boardinghouses of the Boott Cotton Mills Corporation in Lowell. The work
is based, in the main, upon the first volume of a three volume site report,
_Interdisciplinary Investigations of the Boott Mills, Lowell, Massachusetts:
Vol. 1: Life at the Boardinghouses: A Preliminary Report_ (Boston: National
Park Service [NPS], North Atlantic Region, Cultural Resource Management
Series 18, 1987), coauthored by co-principal investigators Mary Beaudry and
Ricardo Elias, and by Stephen Mrozowski. The former authors are affiliated
with the Center for Archaeological Studies at Boston University (CAS-BU),
the latter was supervisory archaeologist for the NPS at Boott Mills. Beaudry
has also prepared a valuable, informative synthesis entitled _The Lowell
Boott Mills Complex and Its Housing: Material Expressions of Corporate
Ideology_ (Historical Archaeology 23:19-32, 1989).
The mill village of Lowell, originally the farming community of East
Chelmsford, was founded in 1825 by the Boston Associates and is situated
between the confluence of the Merrimack and Concord Rivers in northern
Massachusetts near the border with New Hampshire. It was the first planned
industrial city in New England and was named after John A. Lowell, one of
the incorporators who served as corporate treasurer from 1827-1844.
Boott Cotton Mills, named for Kirk Boott an agent for the Boston
entrepreneurs who capitalized the company, was incorporated on March 27,
1835, for the manufacture of cotton and woolen cloth. Occupying an area of
5.7 acres, _The Boott_ comprised both a workplace and eight-block
residential area. Supervisory and skilled laborers lived in 32 _tenements_ (in
reality, apartment-like complexes), while unmarried and unskilled workers--
segregated by sex and nationality--were accommodated (sometimes eight to
a room) in 32 boardinghouses constructed between 1835 and 1839. Company
agents lived elsewhere in more elaborate and spacious rowhomes. The
majority of the textile mill's employees were women, with New England
farmgirls being replaced after 1840 by immigrant laborers, particularly the
Irish. Beaudry's article (1989) provides salient data on sex ratios--the case
study, unfortunately, does not: 1842 (950 females, 120 males), 1868 (1,020
females, 310 males), and 1878 (1,300 females, 500 males). The term _living
on the Boott_ was a phrase employed by the workers to indicate their place
of residence.
Limited excavations were undertaken in 1986 by NPS and CAS-BU at the
request of the Lowell Historic Preservation Commission and concentrated
upon tenement #48 and boardinghouse #45, located on James Street. Historic
documents indicate that the tenement housed a series of families between
1850 and 1900, while the boardinghouse accommodated 25-30 women from
1850-1880 and French-Canadian men from 1900-1910. Both structures
became storage facilities from 1918-1934, at which time they were torn down
and the area reused as a coalyard and parking lot.
In the 1996 publication, the authors state a specific objective--"we wanted
to understand how the people who ran the industrial machinery structured
their lives and shaped their world" (36). The initial three chapters provide
the historic background to the site and archaeological work (12 pp.),
introduce basic concepts of historical archaeology (25 pp.), and consider the
urban landscape (11 pp.). Four chapters describe the excavations and
artifacts, and infer living conditions and lifeways -- sanitation, hygiene, and
health (10 pp.), culinary activities (7 pp.), leisure activities (9 pp.), and
clothing and personal adornment (6 pp.). From the material remains,
documents, oral history, memoirs, and photographs we are informed about
dwelling configurations, 25 x 25 ft. backyards, privies and water wells, food
stuffs and meal preparation, smoking and drinking habits, jewelry, the advent
of plastic haircombs and ornaments (after 1870), and buttons and studs. The
leisure activities included the smoking of cigars and cutties (short clay
pipes),
and drinking hard liquor, wine, and beer. The consumption of alcohol was
supposedly forbidden by company policy, so that an ideal versus real culture
paradox existed.
For interested readers, a recent volume by historian Laurence F. Gross, _The
Course of Industrial Decline: The Boott Cotton Mills of Lowell,
Massachusetts, 1835-1955_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1993), documents the changing industrial scene. Brian C. Mitchell's book
entitled _The Paddy Camps: The Irish of Lowell, 1821-61_ (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1988), provides additional background on the
sociocultural effects of immigration and the famine emigrants of 1845-55.
_Living on the Boot_ contains 34 illustrations, 105 pages of text (large font
and one and one-half line spacing format), plus an annotated list of 68
sources and suggestions for further reading, and a two and one-half page
index. This slim treatise provides a fleeting glimpse into the everyday lives
of textile workers and occasionally presents the reader with comparative data
from the tenements and agents' houses. It has potential applicability in
urban, economic, labor, and women's history. The authors note correctly that
it is important for us to understand the lifeways of the working class as well
as the wealthy and influential, but their effort falls short of the mark.
Certainly much more could be written and additional material incorporated
from the original site reports and sources cited by Gross and Mitchell.
Nonetheless, this is one of the few attempts specialists have made to interpret
archaeological data derived from Cultural Resource Management research,
and to popularize historical, industrial, and household archaeology, and I
applaud this effort. However, professionals will prefer Beaudry's article in
Historical Archaeology. Lowell was not a single company town, so that it
would be useful to know how Boott Mills, one of a number of factories,
related to the other local industries such as the Chelmsford Glass Works,
Middlesex Canal Co., and the remaining manufacturing companies (Hamilton,
Lowell, Merrimack, and Middlesex). Gross covers some of these
relationships in his work. Mrozowski, Ziesing, and Beaudry's brief synthesis
is useful in whetting the appetites of members of the public interested in the
topics considered, serves as an interpretive guide to the site, and can be a
meaningful (but expensive) supplementary textbook for several humanities or
social science disciplines.
Independent Scholar, U.S. Government Charles C. Kolb
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