From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 20
Week 20's theme is "Textile." Clothing, quilts, weaving -- there are so many ways to talk about textiles in our family history! Be creative with this week's theme!
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| Woven into the tapestry of our lives. |
Textiles and the Merrimack valley go together like oil and water. While the rise of textile mills along the Merrimack river in the late 19th century certainly caused a great boom in the economy of the region, you can't deny that they also caused considerable havoc on the environment. I suppose I shouldn't complain too much. I mean they did attract thousands of Italian and Quebecois immigrants who were looking for work and a better way of life. Way to look for that silver lining, Chris....
You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in the Merrimack valley whose family was not shaped by the mills which were as far north as Concord, New Hampshire and stretched all the way to the mouth of the river in Newburyport, Massachusetts. That is a lot of real estate to cover! The Merrimack is only 117 miles long and yet so many people were influenced by it and the mills around them over the years. Take my maternal grandparents, Robert Hamel and Natalie Felker for example.
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| Robert and Natalie Hamel |
Out of all the cities in the valley, Lowell was the one that benefitted the most from the mills. The city was founded in the 1820s as a planned manufacturing center for textiles. You could argue that this was where the growth in the valley began. The mills sprung up here first after all and from there they stretched to cities and towns all around the valley. Amazing and yet kind of scary if you think about it.
The museum closed in 2016 and was dedicated to the history of the mills in the valley. Their primary focus was on wool and each exhibit focused on telling the story of how it went from a sheep to the clothes on your back.
Luckily, there are other museums in the area which could help satiate your desire to learn more about the textile mills and the effect they had on the valley. These include:
1. Bootts Cotton Mills Museum in Lowell.
2. New England Quilt Museum in Lowell.
By the time I came around, my grandfather had long since retired from his work at the museum and I don't really remember him talking about it that much. He was more interested in telling stories about his life in the Air Force and of course his family. My grandmother on the other hand? Uhh...yeah this is where it gets interesting.
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| How much ya wanna bet those two tortured my uncle Bob? |
I can't get past the gloves on my mom's hands. Quite stylin' for 1955, right? She may not have cooked much as I explained last week. At least she could put together some clothes. The only problem is that when she made my sweater it was so incredibly hot and itchy. I think it was made from leftover wool from the textile museum. It certainly smelled like it! It wouldn't surprise me.
I've never been really sure where she got her skills. However, I would think that her mother Henrietta taught her everything she needed to know. Henrietta probably learned from her mother, Lucie. Generations of women in the family may have been proficient in making clothes for people and these days it's my aunt Linda who seems to have the gift of making clothes and even pet beds!
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| The Hamel clan. Note the matching pjs.... |
The costume was so good that it even got first prize at the Woodbury Junior High 7th grade Halloween dance. Not bad. Still wish I had functioning webshooters, though.
Imagine that. Cats really like beds made for dogs! Well, they would sleep on just about anything. It took Cara a while to warm up to the idea of sleeping in a bed like this. But, she did and like I said. The results speak for themselves.
She even made my cousin Kristyn and her husband a Poison Ivy and Joker costume once. There's an odd pairing for you. I guess Harley Quinn moved on....Or Ivy was going to get her revenge. I'm going with the latter! Watch Harley's show on HBO Max and you'll see what I mean.
These days my aunt has gone from making clothes to producing beds for dogs. My aunt is a life-long dog breeder and was responsible for giving my brother and I two canine friends growing up. In time she began her own "Distinctive Bedding by Creature Comforts" pet supply shop on Facebook. She once asked if we needed a doggie bed even though we have a cat now instead of a dog. My parents agreed and I think the results speak for themselves!
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| Draw me like your French cats. |
The bed must have taken a while to make and clearly a lot of thought and love was put into it. It may have been made for dogs that weigh in at about forty pounds. But, it's good for a fifteen pound Maine Coon, right?
Now let's be quiet. The kitten is sleeping.
As you can see textiles has influenced my family pretty well. You could say it's woven into the fabric of our lives. Heh....Heh.... Wow, that joke was bad. I'd better end the blog post on a less cringey note. Dad jokes have no place in a genealogy blog! Actually, I take that back. They might....
Like I said before, these days the mills are closed and have been converted into apartment buildings, offices and other facilities. However, the legacy of the mills remain and you can't really deny that they played some part of peoples' lives here in the valley. Did they inspire the women in my family to create such awesome (and itchy) products? I'm not sure.
If you'd like to learn more about how textile mills shaped the Merrimack valley, please check out these sites:
* https://www.nps.gov/articles/building-america-s-industrial-revolution-the-boott-cotton-mills-of-lowell-massachusetts-teaching-with-historic-places.htm
Enjoy that light reading! See ya next time!
Any photo of the famous first-place Spidey costume?!
ReplyDeleteI can dm you the image of the mask. =D
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