s u m m e r 2009
Economic Development in the Nineteenth Century
Vermont in the 19th Century
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Industrial Revolution Timeline
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This issue of the Flow of History newsletter focuses on economic development and the Industrial Revolution in New England. We have two reviews of Reflections in Bullough’s Pond: Economy and Ecosystem
in New England, the core reading for last fall’s Flow book groups. One is by Flow historian Alan Berolzheimer, the other is by Spaulding High School teacher Christine Smith. Paul Searls, professor of history at Lyndon State College, contributes an essay about conflicts over the identity and direction of
Vermont in the Gilded Age, which were rooted in changes wrought by industrialization and modernization. We also are pleased to provide an extensive list of teachers’ favorite resources on the broad
topic of economic development and related themes,
submitted by participants in the fall book groups. Other
As we indicated in our previous
features include a timeline, some lesson plan activities based
issue, the Flow of History newsletter
around the book Ox-Cart Man, and a notice about the new
is going digital. Please let us know
how you like it, by sending an
Industrial Revolution lending kit created by the American
email to [email protected]
Precision Museum in Windsor.
or [email protected]. We can send
you a hard copy if you request it.
Reflections on Teaching
the Industrial Revolution
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By Alan Berolzheimer
Fall 2008 Book Group Faves
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Why did the Industrial Revolution in America begin in New England? How should we
in this issue :
Reflections on Bullough’s Pond 1
New Industrial Revolution
Lending Kit
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How Much We Can Learn
from the Ox-Cart Man!
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board of directors :
Bridget Fariel, President
Teacher, Rivendell Academy
Reflections on Bullough’s Pond
understand the historical impact of human activity on the natural environment? These are
the questions at the core of Diana Muir’s intelligent and provocative book, Reflections in
Bullough’s Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England (University Press of New England,
2000). We used Reflections in Bullough’s Pond as our main reading for the Flow of History Fall
2008 book groups, which met in Barre, Dummerston, and Springfield, Vermont. It’s safe to
say that most of the participants would recommend the book to any teacher interested in
American history.
Susan Bonthron, Secretary
Documentation Specialist
Jen Brown, Treasurer
Teacher, Dummerston School
Sarah Rooker
Teaching American History Project Director
Alan Berolzheimer
Historian
teaching american history
program partners :
Rivendell Interstate School System
Barre Supervisory Union
Vermont Historical Society
Southeast Vermont Learning Collaborative
credits :
Alan Berolzheimer, editor
Jessica Butterfield, graphic design
www.flowofhistory.org
P: 1.866.889.0042
E: [email protected]
Reflections in Bullough’s Pond is not a straightforward “history of the Industrial Revolution,” although Muir’s narrative does encompass much
of that content. Instead, she is animated by the
two questions posed above to explore why and
how people in New England marshaled their ingenuity to invent new ways of making things,
and new avenues for making a living. One of her
major theses is that New Englanders were driven
to innovate in response to a scarcity of resources. The region was never richly endowed with
“fabulously fertile soils,” a “benign climate,” or
“fabled mines”—and yet its people have generally prospered. Population pressure on the land
was a constant problem for the Europeans who
settled in southern New England, and it continued to be a problem as they conquered the native peoples and expanded their territory into
New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont. Muir’s interest in the ways that humans manipulate nature and shape the landscape is another major
thread in the story that eventually leads to consideration of the contemporary environmental
crisis and the notion of a “third revolution”—a
revolution in our use of energy and materials—
that is now following the agricultural and indus-
trial revolutions. Throughout her examination of
these issues, the book is grounded in Muir’s
deep knowledge of New England’s history and
U.S. economic history through the 19th century.
The book is loaded with fascinating historical vignettes and stimulating analysis that add up to a
very insightful history of “economy and ecosystem in New England.”
Muir begins with a short overview of the prehistory of the region and what we know about
the lifeways of the paleo-Indians who lived here.
While the idea that Native Americans learned
how to intentionally manage their environment
to sustain their cultures has been widely acknowledged by scholars, it’s no less revealing to
read it here. The assertion becomes a premise of
the book: “Man cannot enter a landscape without changing it.” The adoption of agriculture as
a competitive strategy, and the extermination of
the beaver in pursuit of the lucrative fur trade
are two key examples of this point, and Muir tells
these tales with the knowledge, purposefulness,
and verve that are her signature style. As she examines the history of economic development in
New England and builds her argument about
“why lightning struck” and sparked an Industrial
Revolution here, Muir brings many examples, stories, and dramas to the
fore with a flair that makes for enjoyable reading.
Here is a partial list of the events, characters, and wonderments we
meet in Reflections in Bullough’s Pond.
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The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain. Did England have
an Industrial Revolution because it had deposits of coal, or did it
have coal because it had an Industrial Revolution? (The latter is
closer to the truth than the former.)
In 1810, the Vermont counties of Windham, Windsor, Orange, and
Caledonia all produced substantial quantities of goods that were
exported out of the region.
Also around 1810, a Massachusetts cobbler named “Peg” Pillsbury
invented a method for using small pegs instead of stitching to
attach the upper to the sole, thereby enabling mass production and
revolutionizing the manufacture of shoes.
In the early 19th century, Mexicans in California shipped hides to
Massachusetts to be turned into shoes that were shipped back to
California. Frederick Tudor, the Ice King, figured out how to make
money by sending ice from New England ponds to Calcutta.
(Globalization, anyone?)
The United States maintained two similar armories where rifles
were manufactured. Why was the one in Springfield, Massachusetts,
more efficient and successful than the one in Harpers Ferry,
Virginia? (Muir lays the differences to a host of regional economic
and cultural distinctions, including subsistence vs. commodity
production and the Protestant work ethic vs. an aristocratic ethic
that valued property ownership more than work. There were also
regional differences in literacy and the practice of self-government.
All together, these diverse attributes produced a spirit of innovation in New England that did not flourish in Virginia.)
The establishment of the textile industry in New England was rife
with intrigue and industrial espionage. We tend to focus a lot of
attention on the mill girls of Lowell, but that era only lasted a
couple of decades, until the mill owners could purchase the labor of
unskilled immigrant men even more cheaply. And how did those
guys gain control of the water rights they needed to power their
factories? (Sympathetic constitutional and legal interpretations
helped.)
You probably know that many of the people who fled Ireland after
the 1840s potato famine ended up in Boston; but did you realize
that 230,000 Irish inundated a city whose population in 1840 was
only 93,000? And, by the way, this massive influx of people created
an instant market for cheap ready-to-wear clothing that, with the
concurrent invention of the sewing machine, could now be
produced in New England’s textile mills.
Speaking of the Irish, Muir has an interesting hypothesis about why
the Irish community in New England didn’t really produce any
significant inventors, entrepreneurs, or business leaders, as their
Yankee neighbors were doing. She attributes this gap to a
premodern cultural ethos that simply didn’t value work and
ambition in the same way as Yankees steeped in the Protestant
work ethic. Perhaps. But many teachers in our book groups found
this argument questionable or, worse, offensive and ethnocentric.
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You probably also know that much of Vermont was deforested as
land was cleared for livestock (and for fueling the railroads), but
how often do you think about the impact on the region’s waterways? You’ve no doubt heard of Eli Whitney, but another Eli—Eli
Terry—was a much more important figure in the history of the
Industrial Revolution; why haven’t you heard of him? (He’s the guy
who figured out how to mass produce clocks).
The intensity of industrial development on New England’s rivers
and streams was astonishing: “nearly every fall of water…powered
a mill producing tools, machines, paper, leather, teapots, and an
endless web of yard goods.”
The steam engine is significant not only because it made power
available from burning fossil fuels, but also because it liberated
factories from being tied to sources of waterpower, enabling them
to relocate to cities and ports.
So why did lightning strike? As noted above in reference to the armories in Massachusetts and Virginia, Muir argues that a combination
of economic, cultural, and social factors created the conditions that
kindled the Industrial Revolution in New England. The bottom line is
that a literate and relatively well-educated population, immersed in a
worldview that understood work as holy, man as rational, and nature as
subject to human domination, living in a society that protected and rewarded individual initiative, responded to population pressure on the
land by inventing new ways of making and selling goods so as to save
themselves from falling into poverty. Muir also stresses that the Industrial Revolution occurred in an economy “that had already experienced
a commercial revolution”—in other words, “a world where farmers and
craftsmen produced not for individuals with whom they had ongoing
and complex relationships, but for sale in an anonymous marketplace”
(105). She also claims that these developments preceded subsequent
improvements in transportation: “No insatiable world market demanded the produce of Yankee fields and workshops. The productive energy
of a generation of New Englanders in need of new ways to make a living
grew the crops and manufactured the goods that created the demand
for transportation that called the roads and bridges into being” (115).
None of those arguments is uncontroversial among historians. But I
think Muir’s logic and narrative are persuasive. At the very least, Reflections in Bullough’s Pond is a very stimulating and informative book.
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Vermont in the Nineteenth Century
By Paul M. Searls
Vermont’s path diverged from much of the rest of the nation in the nineteenth century. Over those one hundred years, the United
States went from being a pre-capitalist society to a nation whose industrial output exceeded that of any other country. Vermont,
however, remained an overwhelmingly rural state, and it is useful to think of it as, to paraphrase historian Hal Barron’s description of
the town of Chelsea, the state that “stayed behind.” It is inaccurate, however, to think of Vermont as having escaped the progress,
disruptions, and conflict generated by America’s evolution in the nineteenth century.
Indeed, Vermont felt those changes no less keenly than more industrial
parts of the United States. In some ways Vermont experienced that process differently than other places; in other ways its evolution was very
similar. Either way, the result was that Vermont was a radically different
society at the end of that century than it was at the beginning.
The consequences of this century of change were profound, striking
at the heart of Vermonters’ sense of themselves as a community. Different kinds of Vermonters fervently contested the present and future of
the state in a variety of areas of life. Vermonters revisited their collective
past, asking anew what kind of society had the state’s founders wanted:
Was it to be a society that embraced change, or one that tried to perpetuate tradition? Would it be a community of people whose boundaries—“who is a Vermonter?”—were drawn narrowly or broadly? Was
Vermont, as an idea and an aspiration, strong because that idea was
rigid or flexible? Ultimately, in a state characterized by deep divisions,
did those with opposing views of life desire different goals, or were they
merely pursuing different paths to the same goal?
One simple way to organize Vermonters in that era follows the lead
of Robert Shalhope in his book Bennington and the Green Mountain
Boys, dividing them into broad “uphill” and “downhill” categories. This
distinction is geographical: the farmers who first arrived placed their
villages on the tops of hills, whereas the professionals who followed
favored river valleys for their better access to commerce. The categories
are better understood as ideological, however. Briefly stated, each
group entails an individually coherent and mutually contradictory bundle of values. Generally speaking, “uphillers” embraced tradition and
communal values, while “downhillers” sought material and social progress. As Shalhope describes it, with the passing of the Revolutionary
generation, the future direction of Vermont came to be hotly contested
by these two groups. That contest echoed across the totality of the
nineteenth century.
Not all residents of Vermont fit easily into these categories, of course.
They neglect such groups as Native Americans and African Americans,
and particularly the Catholics who occupied Vermont from its beginning. The story of Vermont’s industrialization perhaps begins with this
source of cheap labor, provided early in the century especially by Ireland and Québec. For example, the large number of Irish centered
around Burlington’s waterfront was one of the city’s defining features
early in the century. Meanwhile, some rural towns, such as Fairfield,
were heavily Irish by the 1830s. Later in the century, the censuses of
1880 and 1900 (1890 is largely missing, having been destroyed in a fire)
document the influx of other ethnic immigrants to Vermont, in substantial numbers in some cases (for example, Scots and Italians to Barre). Cultural diversity increased significantly during the nineteenth century.
Whether in farming villages or industrial centers, Vermonters of all
kinds saw life change dramatically in the 1820s. The opening of the
Champlain Canal in 1823, connecting the southern end of Lake Champlain to the Hudson River and thus creating a water route to New York
Continued on page 4
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Vermont in the Nineteenth Century, continued from page 3
City, touched off a dramatic shift to a capitalist economy. Vermonters
were now increasingly dependent on economic forces originating in
distant places, and becoming more enmeshed in a national market
economy. The result was a great deal of social ferment: notably, on the
part of the emergent middle class a reform impulse, and on the part of
the less fortunate, religious and political experimentation. (Middle-class
reformers embraced the causes of temperance and antislavery; working-class people were more frequently drawn to evangelical revivals
and the anti-Mason political crusade.) These economic and social forces
accelerated with the coming of railroads in the 1840s, which further
exposed Vermont to developments in the rest of the country. The railroads brought new and cheaper goods into the state, forced wheat and
sheep farmers into unsuccessful competition with western farmers, and
made it easier for Vermonters to seek their fortune elsewhere. All of
Vermont cemented its position as New England’s most
rural state. But this did not mean that “stagnation” or
“decline” was the order of the day, despite what many
contemporary observers believed.
these changes proved challenging to the maintenance of Vermont as a
viable, prosperous community. By mid-century, uphill and downhill
Vermonters had settled into opposing visions of what was desirable in
such areas of life as land use, education, and welfare.
One consequence of these improvements in transportation was that,
from the 1830s on, Vermont was perhaps chiefly characterized by its
high rate of emigration to cities and the West. From about 1850 until
well into the twentieth century, Vermont’s overall population remained
about the same, with the growth of big towns offset by losses in the
much more numerous rural ones. Vermont cemented its position as
New England’s most rural state. But this did not mean that “stagnation”
or “decline” was the order of the day, despite what many contemporary
observers believed. Even the most isolated hill farmers were active participants in the national economy. Vermont’s small towns exerted considerable political power, as a result of the state’s one-town, one-vote
legislative apportionment.
Industrialization had its greatest impact in the largest towns. At midcentury, mills of many kinds existed in every corner of the state. Vermonters mined iron and copper, quarried slate, granite and marble, and
produced a vast array of finished goods. As elsewhere, the rise of industry was accompanied by worker unrest and conflict, notably the 1846
“Bolton War” touched off by the Central Vermont Railroad’s failure to
pay its workers. There were also a number of strikes, such as that among
female textile workers in Woodstock in 1866. In the second half of the
century worker discontent continued, often in concert with national
developments, such as when employees of the Vermont Marble Company joined the Knights of Labor in 1885 and briefly took political control of Rutland through their United Labor party. Workers in Barre organized the nation’s largest local of the Granite Cutters union, and
beginning in the 1880s they engaged in a long series of conflicts with
quarry owners and manufacturers over wages, hours, and the workplace health and safety impact of new technologies that mechanized
stone cutting and increased the dust problem that caused silicosis.
The main arena of conflict in the second half of the nineteenth century, however, remained between the downhillers and uphillers. By that
time, the groups pursued what Hal Barron calls “two dramatically differ-
ent patterns of life.” An illustration is provided by the lives of George
Grenville Benedict and “Gramp” Abbott. Benedict was a Burlington native, owner of the Burlington Free Press, state senator, and member of a
dizzying number and array of organizations, from Burlington’s exclusive
Algonquin Club to the Vermont Dairymen’s Association (though he
didn’t farm). It was among people like Benedict that the greatest fears
about the perceived decline of Vermont originated. Abbott, on the other hand, had good reason to see rural life in Vermont as stable. In 1870,
Abbott pursued a life of diverse activity and relative simplicity. The 1870
census suggests how diversified, and therefore secure, Abbott’s farm
was: In that year he owned one horse, one milk cow, two oxen, four
other cattle, 40 sheep, and one hog. He raised rye, Indian corn, oats,
buckwheat, and Irish potatoes. He additionally clipped wool, churned
butter, harvested hay, and made maple sugar. He split fence rails, made
shingles, built stonewalls, made soap, and wove baskets.
These were the extremely different worlds produced by Vermont’s
peculiar encounter with industrialization. It would have been easy for
Benedict to consider Abbott uneducated, as his formal education ended at the district school level. But it is equally easy, from a contemporary
perspective, to think that the two were instead equally, but differently,
educated. In the same way, the declining population of a town like
Chelsea was often seen by outsiders as evidence of its stagnation. Looking back, however, evidence suggests that the people leaving such
towns were those who were most superfluous to the evolving local
economy. Towns like Chelsea were becoming increasingly homogenous
and driven by consensus. Such a society might have been unattractively narrow and restrictive to many, but those who embraced it had good
reason to do so, and good reason to fear the interference of outsiders in
it. Like Benedict’s world of Burlington’s elite, the social structure of rural
communities was simply one among many ways available to Americans
to negotiate the changes wrought by industrialization.
In the Gilded Age (roughly 1870-1900) Vermont’s elite did indeed
feel compelled to intervene in rural communities in an attempt to improve, or reform, or even save them. Such intervention came in many
forms, among them modernizing agriculture,
consolidating schools, fighting child labor, and
managing the environment. In each of these
and many other areas, rural Vermonters
resisted outsiders’ reform efforts both in
everyday life and in the state legislature,
which small towns dominated as a result
of Vermont’s one-town, one-vote system.
This resistance created increasing frustration among reformers that what they
considered to be commonsensical
measures were being rejected by those who
needed them most. What the reformers did
not appreciate was that strong communities
Hiland Hall
were very fragile, and very carefully maintained,
things. The introduction of radical, or even incremental, changes to
rural communities had the potential to undermine them dramatically.
The consequences of this ideological divergence are illustrated well
by Hiland Hall’s campaign to erect a monument to the Battle of Bennington, an effort that occupied most of the nineteenth century. A native of Bennington, Hall had grown up around Green Mountain Boys. He
went on to become a successful lawyer and politician, and in the 1850s
governor of Vermont. As Vermont’s economy and society were trans-
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Vermont in the Nineteenth Century, continued from page 4
formed by capitalism in the first half of the nineteenth century, Hall
hoped that all Vermonters would benefit from the increased wealth
produced by the industrial economy. When social conflict and inequality resulted instead, he began to think that the celebration of Vermont’s
past, particularly through the erection of a monument in Bennington,
could bridge this growing distance, uniting Vermonters in a sense of a
shared past. Hall first desired a Bennington monument in the 1820s,
but it was not until the 1860s that he formed an association devoted to
that cause. Even then, it took until the early 1880s, when Hall was at a
very advanced age, to commission designs for the monument. Most of
the members of the association favored a relatively low, ornate monument, on which would be etched the story of the battle. Ardently opposing such a design, Hall instead favored an extremely tall tower on
which nothing was written. His preference baffled members of the association; its chairman, Burlington lawyer Edward Phelps, wrote an
open letter to Hall telling him that, if such a monument was constructed, it would “be silent, without a voice,” and that people “would not
know what it was for.” Hall assured Phelps and his fellow commissioners not to worry: People would know what it was for.
A reasonable conclusion is that Hall wanted the monument to mean
whatever each and every person who viewed it wanted it to mean. Perhaps the dedication of the monument in 1891, as the nineteenth century wound down, illustrates the divergent paths industrialization had
propelled Vermonters through during the previous nine decades, and
suggests how little upillers and downhillers shared. But the many
speakers at the monument’s dedication ceremony who intoned a collective Vermont past that transcended differences, and who spoke of a
united community of Vermonters, indicate otherwise. In many ways,
Vermont experienced industrialization differently than, for example,
the other New England states, and differently situated Vermonters experienced that process differently. But the bottom line is that Vermont’s
evolution in the nineteenth century was very typical, and that all Vermonters were engaged in a very basic effort: to preserve those aspects
of pre-modern life that were most desirable while embracing the benefits of progress.
Paul M. Searls teaches U.S and Vermont History at Lyndon State College.
He is the author of Two Vermonts: Geography and Identity, 1865-1910
(University of New Hampshire Press, 2006).
Industrial Revolution Timeline
1789 Samuel Slater brings textile machinery to New England
1814 Francis C. Lowell establishes large-scale textile factory
in Waltham, MA
1820s Copper mining begins in Strafford, Corinth, Ely, VT
1823 Champlain Canal opens from the lake to the Hudson
River, increases commerce and changes direction of
VT trade from Canada to NY
1824 Rifles with fully interchangeable parts manufactured
at Harpers Ferry armory.
1825 Erie Canal opens
Textile mills set up at Lowell, MA
1830s Marble and slate quarries operating in Rutland County, VT
1834 Fairbanks Scales starts up in St. Johnsbury, VT
1835 Ironworks begin at Tyson’s Furnace in Plymouth, VT
1837 John Deere introduces the first steel plow
Samuel Morse develops the telegraph
1840 80 textile factories in VT employ 10-100 people
1846 1,200 VT girls are employed in the Lowell mills
“Bolton War” on Vermont Central RR, Vermont’s first
labor strike, by Irish workers due pay
1850 11,000 VTers are living in CA, many searching for gold
1850s Railroads emerge as nation’s first big businesses
Estey Organ company starts up in Brattleboro, VT,
becomes largest in US
1851 Isaac Singer invents mechanical sewing machine
Robbins and Lawrence factory in Windsor, VT, creates
interchangeable parts for guns
1854 Henry Bessemer invents the steel converter
1855 Brattleboro washerwomen strike for higher pay
1859 Petroleum discovered in PA
1860 42% of native-born Vermonters live out of state
1866 Female textile workers in Woodstock, VT, strike for
10-hour day
continued on page 6
The Bennington Battle Monument
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Reflections on Teaching
the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution Timeline, continued from page 5
By Christine Smith
1867 Alfred Nobel produces dynamite
The New Haven River flows through Addison County in
Refrigerated rail car invented
Vermont and is well known in New England for its pristine
VT General Assembly adopts child labor and mandatory
school attendance law (children under 15 limited to 10
hours work/day, had to attend school for 3 months).
beauty and trout fishing, yet few realize it was at one time a
hub of economic activity, from the late 18th into the early 20th
century. The river meanders through several small towns
including a hamlet called New Haven Mills, which boasted a
church, a general store, and a box factory. At any given time,
1869 First transcontinental railroad completed
1870s Burlington, VT, a leading US lumber port
the river supplied enough water to sustain a grist mill, a
1870 John D. Rockefeller forms Standard Oil trust
sawmill, a tannery, a casket factory, and a tool company that
1875 Granite industry in Barre, VT, begins to boom
with building of railroad spur
produced axes.
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Today all that remains as evidence of The Mill’s industrial past is a crumbling foundation that I remember playing around as a kid on hot summer days while swimming in the river. As Diana Muir states in Reflections in Bullough’s Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England,
Industrial New England in the first half of the nineteenth century was
built on innumerable millstreams, large and small. Nearly every fall of
water in New England powered a mill producing tools, machines, paper,
leather, teapots, and an endless web of yard goods.2
Vermonters recognized rivers as an economic resource, and
throughout the 19th century they harnessed waterpower to innovation and manufacturing as a way to develop and maintain a measure
of prosperity in their communities. However, few think of the environmental impact innovation and manufacturing had on the land and
rivers of Vermont, including me. After reading Reflections in Bullough’s
Pond I realized that most Vermont students know little about early industrialization and its detrimental impact on the Vermont landscape
during the industrial age. The book also made me reflect on how little
I promote this history in my own curriculum. How are students supposed to grasp the enormity of the industrial changes experienced in
the United States if they are first unable to comprehend how those
changes affected early Vermonters? How do we get them invested in
caring at all? In my view, we do this by moving away from the textbook
and making industrialization relevant to our students’ own history, and
by illustrating to them that our everyday actions impact not only our
lives but our environment as well.
When I think about history, I like to make it personal. Finding my
connection to a particular person, time period, or event makes history
relevant and meaningful and allows me to see how my life is affected
by it. For example, the reference to New Haven Mills and the New Haven River comes from a very personal place. My family’s history is there
and I spent my childhood roaming “the Mills” learning to fish and swim
in the river. My colleagues and I are lucky here in Barre, we have the
Vermont Historical Society and our granite past to excite personal connections among our students. However, like most teachers, our good
intentions are easily thwarted by lack of time, resources, and sufficient
background knowledge to help us foster student inquiry and critical
thinking on historical subjects.
Whenever possible, I like to find relevant little stories that pique my
students’ interest in history. These “historical nuggets” are sadly missing
1876 Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone
1879 Thomas Edison invents the incandescent light
1883 “Ely War”: Copper workers denied pay revolt,
National Guard is called in to quell the disturbance
1886 American Federation of Labor is established
Interstate Commerce Act regulates railroad rates, first
federal regulatory action
Barre workers organize local of Granite Cutters union, becomes largest in US
United Labor party sweeps elections in Rutland
1892 Barre granite workers strike for 5 months
in textbooks. The textbook I use does well to outline the basic impetus
of early industrialization and the Yankee spirit behind the movement,
yet its dryness does little to arouse my students’ curiosity. One of the
things I appreciate about book groups and primary source workshops
like those sponsored by the Flow of History is that they give educators
access to sources and knowledge that contain local connections to
national events. Reading Reflections in Bullough’s Pond this year not
only exposed me to a variety of “historical nuggets,” it also enlightened me on how industrialization and Yankee innovation impacted
the environment. One of my favorite Bullough’s Pond nuggets is Muir’s
ability to visually describe the massive old growth forest here in America before colonization by explaining that a squirrel could literally
travel from Cape Cod to the Mississippi River without ever touching
the ground by moving along the tree tops. I would like to share a few
examples of how Muir’s work will influence my curriculum.
Environmental history was not taught in history classes I took as a
K-12 student or undergraduate and I had little exposure to it in graduate school. This omission has followed me into the classroom. While I
briefly discuss the negative consequences of industrialization for the
natural environment, I have never helped my students make the
deep connections between innovation and economic stability
at the expense of local and regional ecosystems. For example,
Muir explains that clearing land for farming and to meet the demand for the railroads’ consumption of wood in the 1850s, created massive deforestation throughout New England and by the
1840s, 80 percent of Vermont’s landscape was bare of trees. Deforestation accounted for tremendous loss of habitat for many
game animals, forcing deer and moose to disappear deep into
the mountains and eradicating the wild turkey in Vermont due
to their inability to repopulate. Large predatory animals such as
the mountain lion, the rattlesnake, and the wolf were hunted to
extinction in order to make an area safer for livestock. Sadly, this
historical nugget will be especially relevant to my students who
are hunters, as they will undoubtedly be able to make this connection to the past.
Muir also effectively describes how the mills of New England
not only provided work and goods, but also produced enough
waste to turn pristine rivers into running sewers that changed
color depending on the type of waste expelled and the dye color
utilized by the factory on any given day. Urbanization surrounding factories created massive needs for both fresh water to drink
and the removal of waste water. In their infinite wisdom “town
fathers” didn’t create plants to treat sewage, but instead built
sewers or “pipes to carry wastewater away in simple faith that,
diluted by the natural flow of rainwater, rivers would purify themselves. They did not worry about the ocean at all.”3 Even oyster
haters like me can be dismayed over the destruction of the oyster
farms in Long Island Sound and Connecticut situated at the ends
of those polluted rivers. Those town fathers were incapable of
understanding the delicate balance of the ocean ecosystem, and
this nugget provides us with a fine example of how America’s
insatiable need for commodities polluted rivers, depleted fish
stocks and forests, contaminated drinking water, spread disease,
and forced the extinction of various animals.
As a social historian, I tend to focus my teaching on the human
condition and the inequities that economic and political conditions bring to the underprivileged. Skimming over or ignoring
early industrialization and its effects on the creation of a stable
economy in New England is no longer an option. Muir’s book
has allowed me to rethink how I teach the Industrial Revolution. I
plan on using portions of the book in my college prep class to al-
7
low my students to recognize and analyze the multiple factors associated
with industrialization and how those factors impacted the environment.
I’ll engage my other students with many of Muir’s “nuggets.” What student
wouldn’t be intrigued by the irony that southern planters stole the model
of the cotton gin and Eli Whitney spent the rest of his life trying to recoup
his losses on patent infringement; or that to satisfy their need for linen
in the paper-making process, paper makers would use the wrappings of
mummies; or that once industrialization moved away from the rural areas and into the cities, reforestation would again make Vermont truly the
“Green Mountain State”?
Having grown up along the New Haven River, I often wonder what life
was like for those who once lived and worked along it during its heyday. A
major fire in 1924 destroyed all but the church and as a consequence, “the
Mills” turned into a residential community.4 Implications of industrialization on the river can be found in the fact that every so often, the state fish
hatchery has to fill the river with trout so those who fish it have something
to catch. It seems that the “pristine river” so well enjoyed by anglers is susceptible to flooding due to human alteration of the landscape.5 It is this
kind of impact that Muir wants us to remember as we continue to face the
affects of human interaction on the environment.
The Industrial Revolution turned night into day, annihilated distance, and
enabled us to fly higher than ever Icarus dreamed. The realization that not
only are we part of nature, but that the natural world sets limits to what we
can do need not prevent us from illuminating our homes, speaking with
friends thousands of miles away, or flying across continents. It does caution
us to find ways to do these things without destroying our world.6
Christine Smith teaches at Spaulding High School in Barre.
Harold Farnsworth, Harold and Robert Rodgers, New Haven in Vermont, (New Haven, Vt., 1984), 143-144.
2
Diana Muir, Reflections in Bullough’s Pond: Economy and Ecosystem
in New England, (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2000), 168.
3
Ibid, 212.
4
Farnsworth, New Haven in Vermont, 223-224.
5
Matthew Dickerson, Addison Independent, July 16, 1998.
http://community.middlebury.edu/~dickerso/fishing/articles/july16_
flood.html
6
Muir, Reflections in Bullough’s Pond, 256.
1
The mills at Lowell.
8
Fall 2008 Book Group, The Making of Modern America, 1820-1900
Teachers’ Recommended Resources
early contact and colonial period
Wilbur, C. Keith. The New England Indians (Chelsea House, 1997). The
Woodland Indians (Globe Pequot, 1995). Upper elementary and middle school. Good background on the native peoples of New England.
Vanderhoop, Jannette. Cranberry Day: A Wampanoag Harvest Celebration (Wampanoag Education Dept., 2002). Traditions survive in
contemporary society.
Bowen, Gary. Stranded at Plimoth Plantation, 1626 (HarperTrophy,
1998). Upper elementary and middle school. A fictional 13-year-old
boy’s journal of Pilgrim life.
Dow, George Francis. Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony
(Dover, 1988). Adult nonfiction. Originally published by the Society for
the Preservation of New England Antiquities in 1935. Comprehensive,
reliable, lots of good images.
Kurlansky, Mark. The Cod’s Tale (Putnam, 2001). Elementary. History
of Atlantic cod fisheries, kid’s version of Cod: A Biography of the Fish that
Changed the World.
Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the
Ecology of New England (Hill and Wang, 1983). Adult nonfiction.
Cronon treats the ecological impact of both Indians and English settlers
even-handedly, as he highlights their differing attitudes toward the use
and ownership of land.
agriculture and rural life
Sloane, Eric. Diary of an Early American Boy (1962; reprinted as Eric
Sloane’s Sketches of America Past, Promontory Press, 1995). Upper elementary through high school. Beloved for his devotion to and illustrations of traditional crafts and lifeways, Sloane retells parts of an 1805 diary of a 15-year-old and focuses on early-19th-century craftsmanship.
Hall, Donald. Ox-Cart Man (Puffin Books, 1979). All grades. In the fall, a
farmer loads his cart with the year’s produce and journeys to the Portsmouth market. There he buys, sells, and returns to his family to begin
the year’s work again. Great classroom activities available from the Flow
of History.
Spier, Peter. To Market! To Market! (Yearling, 1992). Elementary.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Farmer Boy. Upper elementary and middle
school. The chapters on the peddler and the shoemaker coming to the
farm depict the early rural economy.
Hastings, Scott. The Vermont Farm Year in 1890 (Billings Farm and Museum, 1983, 1990). Elementary and middle school. “Excellent resource.
. . with a unit on Farming. It has detailed descriptions that teachers and
students could use to make replicas.”
forest industry
Applebaum, Diana. Giants in the Land (Houghton Mifflin, 1993). Elementary. Amazing woodcuts and lovely prose tell the story of the mast
trees reserved by charter for the use of the British Navy.
Adams, Peter. Early Loggers and the Sawmill (Crabtree Publishing,
1992). Upper elementary. Part of the Bobbie Kalman Early Settler Life
series.
Wessels, Tom. Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of
New England (Countryman Press, 1997). Adult nonfiction. This fascinating and lively book explains how to interpret what we see in the New
England landscape.
Foster, David and O’Keefe John. New England Forests Through Time:
Insight from the Harvard Forest Dioramas (Harvard Forest, 2000). High
School. “In the museum at the Harvard Forest in Petersham, MA, are 23
large dioramas showing how that land looked at various periods during the past 300 years. This book displays all the dioramas in color…
and the accompanying text interprets the environmental drama they
exquisitely depict.”
Carroll, Charles, F. The Timber Economy of Puritan New England (University Press of New England, 1973). Adult nonfiction. “This admirable
little volume…[offers a] stimulating discussion of the impact of the forest upon the settlers and then of the settlers upon the forest.”
mills and child labor
Paterson, Katherine. Lyddie (Puffin, 1991). The classic of young adult
historical fiction about a Vermont farm girl who goes to work in the
Lowell mills to save the family farm is a vivid and compelling story.
McCully, Emily Arnold. The Bobbin Girl (Dial, 1996). Upper elementary.
A ten-year-old girl works at the Lowell mills and experiences a turn out.
Noyes, Alice Daley. Yvonne of the Amoskeag Textile Mills (2000). Story
about a mill girl.
Winthrop, Elizabeth. Counting on Grace (Yearling, 2007; available with
audio read by the author). Winthrop wrote this young adult novel based
on research she did to identify the girl in Lewis Hine’s iconic photograph
of a mill girl. The story of a French-Canadian girl working in a Vermont
mill c. 1910 who helps bring Hine to her factory, the book engages issues of millwork, child labor, and ethnicity.
Macaulay, David. Mill (Sandpiper, 1989). Upper Elementary and middle
school. A typically amazing and knowledgeable Macaulay book, on a
19th-century New England cotton mill. Also an accompanying DVD,
Mill Times (PBS).
Paterson, Katherine. Bread and Roses, Too (Clarion Books, 2006).
Young Adult novel. Based on a true episode from the famous Lawrence,
MA strike of 1912. Kids from the workers’ families are sent to live with
families in Barre, VT. Another great book from Paterson.
slavery in new england
Yates, Elizabeth. Amos Fortune, Free Man (Puffin, 1989). Young Adult
biography, upper elementary through high school; Newbery winner
in 1951. Fortune was captured in Africa and sold into slavery in New
England. He bought his freedom at age 60, moved to Jaffrey, NH, and
became a prominent businessman and citizen.
Wall, Patricia Q. Child Out of Place: A Story for New England (Fall
Rose Books, 2004). Young Adult novel, upper elementary through high
school. A slave girl in Portsmouth, NH in the early 19th century.
immigration
Bial, Raymond. Tenement: Immigrant Life on the Lower East Side.
(Houghton Mifflin, 2002). Upper elementary through high school.
A wonderful book that evokes immigrant life at the turn of the 20th century in text and photographs.
Freedman, Russell. Immigrant Kids (Scholastic, 1980; Puffin, 1995).
Upper Elementary and middle school. Similar to Bial, Tenement, though
with more text and starker photos.
9
Addy, Sharon Hart. Right Here On This Spot (Houghton Mifflin, 1999).
Elementary. Stately text and spare language evoke the changes of
seasons and centuries at one farm, and set the stage for the discovery
of artifacts.
Lyon, George Ella. Who Came Down That Road? (Orchard Books, 1998).
Elementary. In this acclaimed picture book, a mother and child discuss a
path that runs past their house.
Jaspersohn, William. The Two Brothers (Vermont Folklife Center; August
House, 2008). Elementary. Based on family archives, a story of brothers
from Prussia who land as farm workers in VT in the 1880s.
Cherry, Lynne. A River Ran Wild: An Environmental History (Harcourt,
Brace, 1992). Elementary. This history of the Nashua River from precontact
times into the 1990s shows the impact of human activity, especially the
Industrial Revolution, on the river, and the successful effort to clean it up.
Hesse, Karen. Letters from Rifka (Square Fish). Young Adult novel. A
young Russian Jewish girl fights prejudice and bureaucracy before she
is reunited with her family in America—“a memorable heroine, a vivid
sense of place, and a happily-ever-after ending.”
Fleming, Denise. Where Once there was a Wood (Henry Holt, 2000).
Elementary. Explores the plants and animals in a wooded area before
their displacement by a housing development.
Hest, Amy. When Jessie Came Across the Sea (Candlewick, 2003).
Elementary. Turn-of-the-century story about a 13-year-old girl who emigrates from Eastern Europe to New York and finds work in a dressmakers’
shop.
Giff, Patricia Reilly. Maggie’s Door (Yearling, 2005). Young Adult novel.
Story of two kids fleeing the Irish potato famine, crossing the Atlantic,
and seeking a family member in Brooklyn.
Coerr, Eleanor. Chang’s Paper Pony (HarperCollins, 1993). Elementary.
A Chinese boy’s experiences during the California Gold Rush.
Lee, Milly. Landed (FSG, 2006). Elementary. A Chinese boy tries to join
his father in America, during the period of Chinese exclusion in the late
19th century. Based on the experiences of the author’s father-in-law.
Yep, Laurence. Dragon’s Gate (HarperCollins, 1995). Young Adult novel.
Fine historical fiction about Chinese laborers building the transcontinental railroad.
Auch, Mary Jane. Ashes of Roses (Dell Laurel Leaf, 2002). Young Adult
novel. Girls in an Irish immigrant family work at the Triangle Shirtwaist
factory and experience the catastrophic fire. For historical context see
David Von Drehle, Triangle: The Fire that Changed America (Grove,
2003).
westward expansion
Panagopoulos, Janie Lynn. Erie Trail West (River Road Publications,
1995). Upper Elementary and middle school. An eleven-year-old New
York farm girl travels with her parents to the Michigan Territory in 1836
by way of the Erie Canal.
The Erie Canal (Chatham Hill Games). An interpretive “cut and fold”
game.
Larkin, Daniel, ed. Erie Canal, New York’s Gift to the Nation: A Document-Based Teacher Resource (New York State Archives Partnership
Trust and Cobblestone, 2001). Upper Elementary through high school.
Essays, documents, activities, DBQs.
environment and change over time
Wilkes, Angela. A Farm Through Time (Dorling Kindersley, 2002).
Elementary. Millard, Anne. A Street Through Time (DK Children, 1998).
Elementary (the example is from Europe). These books rely primarily on
great illustrations to convey information about change over time.
Jackson, Kenneth. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the
United States (Oxford University Press, 1985). Adult nonfiction. Academic
and readable, traces the roots of migration from cities to suburbs in the
19th century, focusing on the 1880s through the 1970s.
Ponting, Clive. A New Green History of the World: The Environment
and the Collapse of Great Civilizations (1992; Penguin, 2007). Adult
nonfiction. An environmental perspective on the rise and fall of civilizations throughout history; includes industrialization and fossil fuels.
general and miscellaneous
Brown, Cynthia Stokes. Big History: From the Big Bang to the Present (New Press, 2008). Upper elementary through high school. A lucid,
“vast historical mosaic” emphasizing the mutual impact of people and
planet. “In a blink, the Industrial Revolution and world wars lead to the
new millennium.”
If You…. series (Scholastic). Elementary. Titles on the Pilgrims, colonial
times, the American Revolution, slavery, westward migration.
Colman, Penny. Girls: A History of Growing Up Female In America
(Scholastic, 2003). Upper elementary through middle school. Compelling stories from all walks of life through the ages.
Hakim, Joy. A History of US: Book 4: The New Nation (Oxford University
Press, 2006). Middle and high school. Covers the first half of the 19th
century. These texts are well regarded by historians and educators.
Sherman, Michael, et. al. Freedom and Unity: A History of Vermont
(Vermont Historical Society, 2004). High school. Has excellent content,
and citations to other sources, on economic development in Vermont in
the 19th century.
Guyette, Elise. Vermont: A Cultural Patchwork (Cobblestone Publishing, 1986). Upper elementary through high school. This teacher favorite
emphasizes human diversity in Vermont history.
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle (1906); Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation
(Houghton Mifflin, 2001). Adult nonfiction. How about this for a pair
spanning a century of the industrialization of food?
magazines
Cobblestone and Cobblestone Teacher’s Guide
America At Work: The Industrial Revolution. Sept. 1981.
American Immigrants: Part One. Dec. 1982; Part Two. Jan. 1983
Tenement Life. Feb. 2004
scholastic news
The Lowell Mill Girls (March 17, 2008).
Kids Discover: Ellis Island (2002); Immigration (??)
field trips/websites
Old Sturbridge Village (www.osv.org). Sturbridge, MA. One of the
country’s largest living history museums, OSV recreates New England
life from 1790-1840 with a large staff of historians in costume, 59 historic buildings, and three authentic water-powered mills. Visitors can
ride in a stagecoach, view antiques and heirloom gardens, meet farm
animals, and take part in hands-on crafts year-round. Very good educational programming.
The Pequot Museum (www.pequotmuseum.org). Mashantucket, CT.
Life-size walk-through dioramas, changing exhibits, and live performances of contemporary arts and cultures. Interactive exhibits depict
18,000 years of native and natural history; two libraries (one for children) offer great materials on the histories and cultures of all native
peoples of the US and Canada.
10
Historical Society of Cheshire County (www.hsccnh.org). Keene, NH.
Facilities include the Wyman Tavern (1762), the Horatio Colony, and the
historical society archives and collections. This regional society focuses
on the history of southwestern New Hampshire and they do educational programming.
Northfield Mountain (www.firstlightpower.com/northfield/default.
asp). Northfield, MA. Offers educational programs around the themes
of energy, land use, and environmental stewardship.
The Tenement Museum (www.tenement.org). New York, NY. An amazing resource about the history of the immigrant experience in America.
If you can’t take your students to New York, do check out the website.
Fort Number 4 (www.fortat4.org). Charlestown, NH. Hopefully to reopen soon, this living history museum focuses on the frontier experience of the early settlers in the lower Connecticut River Valley, c. 1740s.
Good educational programs, curriculum material on the web.
New Industrial Revolution Lending Kit
The American Precision Museum in Windsor, VT, with assistance from the Flow of
History, has launched a traveling education kit about the Industrial Revolution in
northern New England. Designed for grades 7-12 and keyed to standards in VT and NH,
the kit includes artifacts, photos, primary source documents, activities, books, CDs a
video, and lesson plans. The four modules each contain a teacher’s guide and focus on
an essential question. The modules are I – Background: 1750 – 1850; II - Invention and
Technology; III - Life and Labor; and IV - Legacy and Impact (for advanced students
and high school).
The kit will help students discover how innovation and hard work transformed a farmand forest-based economy into a world of factories, machines, and mass-produced
consumer goods. Much of this transformation originated in towns and villages in New
England, where you can still see the evidence of early factories and mills, and where you
can study local records to find out what life was like during early years of industrialization.
The kit is available for a three-week rental period and costs $40, including shipment to
your school. (Your school is responsible for return shipping costs.) The rental fee is $30
if you pick the kit up in person from the museum.
The kit is a great way to prepare for a visit to the museum, which offers three activities
that students can do in small groups: the Windsor in the 1860s Quest, a walk around
the museum’s historic neighborhood; guided exploration of the exhibit “Muskets to
Motorcars: Yankee Ingenuity and the Road to Mass Production;” and demonstrations
at their working machine shop, seasonally staffed by high school interns.
The museum exhibits are open to the public
May 23 through October 31, 2009.
For more information see www.americanprecision.org,
or contact the museum at 802-674-5781.
11
How Much We Can Learn from the Ox-Cart Man!
By Alan Berolzheimer
One of the supplementary readings in last fall’s book groups was the picture book
Ox-Cart Man, written by New Hampshire’s Donald Hall and illustrated by Barbara
Cooney. It’s a wonderful little story about the constancy and seasonality of farm
work: we see the family at work on a variety of activities, then the father loads
up a wagon and journeys to market in Portsmouth, where he sells everything—
including the ox—buys necessities (and a few goodies) for the farm, and returns
home to begin the cycle anew. We created learning activities with the book
for elementary, middle school, and high school students that explore how the
economy of the early 19th century worked.
The elementary activity, “Needs and Wants: Now and Then,” is one we
found online. You start by making color copies of various images from
the book and cutting them out. The story is read out loud and the children are given the cut out pictures. Their task is to sort the images (of
animals, food, other goods, and activities like spinning) by season or
month and place them on a large circle chart (right). Discussion can
focus around questions such as, “Are there any other farm chores that
might be missing?”, “What seems to be the busiest time on the farm?”,
and “Why does the Ox-Cart Man trade these items?” Part two has the
students brainstorm about the “needs and wants” of their own families,
and compare them with those of the Ox-Cart Man’s family. This series of
activities can help elementary students begin to understand the basics
of subsistence, barter, and commerce.
Our middle school activity used reading strategies to explore language and poetry. Students pair up and the teacher reads the story
aloud, asking them to listen carefully and visualize the story. Every couple of pages the teacher pauses to let the students discuss what they
“see.” Then the teacher reads the story a second time, with each student
assigned to listen for literary tools like alliteration, repetition, rhyme,
and symbolism. Finally, the students do a close reading of the text and
pictures to identify the use of those techniques in the text. The activity
culminates with a group discussion of what they’ve found and why a
writer uses these techniques to craft a piece of literature.
For high school students we created an activity around a 19thcentury daybook. Daybooks were the ledgers used by merchants
to keep track of debts and credits accumulated by their customers over time. Students would be guided through a series of
questions requiring them to read and collect evidence, analyze
and contextualize the information, and interpret the meaning
of the document. This exercise opens up many windows into
how the American economy functioned in the first half of the
nineteenth century and what the transition to industrialization and larger-scale markets looked like. You can track debts
and credits and think about why people are paying for their
purchases by trading goods, with labor, or with money. You
can consider the seasonality of work. You can explore the
nature of rural, largely agricultural communities as they are
becoming swept up in broader streams of national and
international commerce. The culmination of this activity
is for students to create their own daybook pages using the goods and
activities presented in Ox-Cart Man.
Teachers in the three book groups responded very favorably to these
activities. There was a general consensus that each of them was appropriately suited to its grade level, that students would enjoy doing them,
and that they provide exciting learning opportunities about economic
development in the new nation. Modeling these activities with teachers proved to be a constructive effort all around. To view the documents, worksheets, and instructions, go to the Flow of History website
at: www.flowofhistory.org/