A Mill Girl's Life in Lowell, 1835–45 | History for Sleep

Lucy Larcom was between eleven and twelve years old when she went to work in the mills of Lowell, Massachusetts. Her first job was to change the bobbins on the spinning-frames every three quarters of an hour. Over the next ten years she moved from the spinning room to the cloth room, kept a red rosebush beside her work, pasted poems along her window seat, and wrote for the magazines the mill girls made themselves. In 1889 she wrote it all down, from memory, in A New England Girlhood. Tonight we follow her through those Lowell years, slowly: the bell before daylight, the long rooms of machines, the river under the windows, and quiet evenings in her mother's boarding house. A calm story to fall asleep to. What is true: Lucy's years, work and words come from her own memoir, retold in our own words, with short quotes from the 1889 book. She wrote it more than forty years later, from memory. When the narrator adds the world around her, you will hear it said plainly. Source Lucy Larcom, A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1889). Free to read at Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2293 About this video The narration voice is AI-generated. The images are AI-generated artistic reconstructions, not historical pictures or portraits of real people. Chapters 0:00 Every three quarters of an hour 2:23 A stage-coach to the Merrimack 9:50 A house full of girls 15:04 Bobbins 22:22 Three months of school 27:34 The one summer holiday 32:53 Winter mornings with Emilie 39:13 The frames by the river windows 47:03 By the sea, with a baby 51:36 A rosebush on the sill 59:15 The dressing-room, facing west 1:03:15 The cloth-room 1:13:26 Windows thrown open in the cold 1:18:59 Early spring, 1846 1:24:30 The quietest room #HistoryForSleep #SleepStory #EarlyAmerica